The Cascade Vol. 21 No. 14

Vol. 21 Issue. 14

www.ufvcascade.ca

May 8 – May 21, 2013

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NEWS News

Graffiti gains new life through mural

A new mural will be joining the community this month, replacing the traditional grad graffiti wall by Robert Bateman Secondary School. Our photojournalist Blake MacGuire will be following the transformative journey.

Opinion

A matter of space We’re not talking outer space here. We’re talking public spaces. Stewart Seymour takes a hard look at Abbotsford’s city planning and identifies a few simple ways to create better communal areas that will help foster a stronger, happier and more civic-minded city.

pg. 4

pg. 9

Arts & Life

Sulpture gives new life to old papers

Art student Julie Ruffel collected old Cascade newspapers for her paper mache sculpture depicting the horror of the ivory trade. Griffy Vigneron talks to her about how her piece “The Cost of Ivory” sheds light on the gruesome and prevalent practice of poaching of animals like elephants for the illegal trade of ivory.

pg. 13

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Sports & Health

Women do belong in locker rooms

Melissa Spady writes a letter to Don Cherry to express her disgust towards his unabashedly sexist view that women should be kept out of locker rooms (and not work as sports reporters as a result). We’re left wondering why anyone still supports that guy.

pg. 19

EDITORIAL

Auf wiedersehen NICK UBELS THE CASCADE

Farewell columns can get a bit dicey.

They tend to fall into one of a few camps: a tearful goodbye to the readership, a vision for the future of the publication or an attempt at sage wisdom supposedly hard-earned over years in print media. Yet I cannot help but feel that two-and-a-half years of work at The Cascade doesn’t exactly qualify me for any of these options.

I could say that it’s been a slice, and it certainly has, but with a publication the size of The Cascade, most of my interactions with readers have been limited to occasional email correspondence or people popping by the office.

The kind of report most columnists write of is one built up over the course of years and years of regular columns and snowballing feedback. I’ve only written 27 editorials, this one included.

And even though I’m graduating this spring, I’m not out the door quite yet. I’ll be filling in as interim opinion editor over our summer issues, which means you’ll be seeing regular opinion columns from me for the next handful of weeks anyway.

It’s like that thing where you say goodbye to someone and then realize that you’re walking away in the same direction. Awkward as fuck.

As for what the future of The Cascade holds, isn’t that something best left to my successor, Dessa Bayrock. I’ll be providing some feedback, but as soon as I finish writing this piece, its the new editorial board’s ship to steer.

Finally: sage wisdom. Tales of journalism lore. Big mistakes and big lessons. I could tell you that it always pays to ask or that it’s better to check your facts thoroughly than have to backtrack, but these are things I’ve learned through experience, not because someone just told me. To be honest, I’m pretty uncomfortable with the whole idea of broad, vague advice at most stages in life, let alone now. I’m only 23, after all. What do I know?

Of course there’s lots of specific, media-related things I could offer, but they are so particularly-suited to media nerds that I would risk alienating most of our readership.

Here’s my moment of truthful, maybe embarrassing honesty: the editorial was the part of the job that I was most anxious about when I first applied. I’m pleased with much of what I’ve managed to produce, but as anyone in the office can tell you, it has been one of the biggest sources of stress for me to compose something that will lead off the paper during the height of the production cycle. It’s that one thing that’s always creeping over my shoulder,

Volume 21 · Issue 14 Room C1027 33844 King Road Abbotsford, BC V2S 7M8 604.854.4529 Editor-in-chief nick@ufvcascade.ca Nick Ubels Managing editor amy@ufvcascade.ca Amy Van Veen Business manager joe@ufvcascade.ca Joe Johnson Online editor michael@ufvcascade.ca Michael Scoular Production manager stewart@ufvcascade.ca Stewart Seymour Art director anthony@ufvcascade.ca Anthony Biondi Copy editor joel@ufvcascade.ca Joel Smart News editor news@ufvcascade.ca Dessa Bayrock Interim opinion editor opinion@ufvcascade.ca Nick Ubels Interim arts & life editor arts@ufvcascade.ca Amy Van Veen Interim sports editor sports@ufvcascade.ca Joel Smart

Image: Mamboman1/ flickr

demanding my attention when I’d much rather be working with Tony Biondi on cover art.

There’s something about this space that, to me, demands a certain kind of article a little different than your regular opinion column. It has to somehow tie in to the issue, but not in a superficial, promote our publication kind of way; that’s what the blurbs at the top of this page are for.

What I’ll say is this: engage with this space.

A lot of care and attention goes

into putting together the editorial to provide as close to a highlighted column as we can offer.

Some are funny, some political, some anecdotal, but hopefully, there’s something for you to take away, chew on, respond to.

You’re unlikely to see a direct appeal to let us know what you think, but it is always implied.

So write an email, drop a line, stay in touch. Make this a place to publicly hash out ideas and issues raised, because that’s our entire reason to be here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

News writer jess@ufvcascade.ca Jess Wind Photojournalist blake@ufvcascade.ca Blake McGuire Varsity writer Jasper Moedt Staff writers Katie Stobbart, Griffy Vigneron Contributors Katherine Gibson, Jeremy Hannaford, Riley Nowlan, Ryan Petersen, Melissa Spady, Kayla St. Louis, Micke Thompson, Tim Ubels Printed By International Web exPress

May 11 – Jul 13

Now – May 17

May 22 – 26

May 11

Battle of the Bands

UFV’s Visual Arts Show

Treasure Island

Abbotsford Farm & Country Market

Eighteen bands. Ten weeks. The battle is on.

CIVL is hosting Battle of the Bands at AfterMath, held every Saturday from May 11 to July 13. Doors open at 7 p.m., and bands go from 7:30 to 9 p.m., with tickets only $5 per night.

It’s that time of year again – the UFV Bachelor of Fine Arts grad show is on now until May 17, showcasing the best and most vivid of UFV students’ work. Stop into C building from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday to wander through the brilliance.

Do you ever think the world needs more swashbuckling? Look no further than Theatre Junkies Anonymous’ production of Treasure Island. From May 22 to 26 at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre, you can watch the adventures of piracy – on the high seas, not so much on the interwebs. Tickets are $16 for adults and $14 for students.

When the sun shines, there’s really nothing else to do but gather your groceries and support local vendors at the weekly Abbotsford Farm & Country Market. Held every Saturday at Montrose Avenue and George Ferguson Way, the market is the perfect place to pick up fresh Gesundheit bread and a necklace for your mom. (Reminder: it’s Mother’s Day.)

The Cascade is UFV’s autonomous student newspaper. It provides a forum for UFV students to have their journalism published. It also acts as an alternative press for the Fraser Valley. The Cascade is funded with UFV student funds. The Cascade is published every Wednesday with a circulation of 1500 and is distributed at UFV campuses and throughout Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Mission. The Cascade is a member of the Canadian University Press, a national cooperative of 75 university and college newspapers from Victoria to St. John’s. The Cascade follows the CUP ethical policy concerning material of a prejudicial or oppressive nature.

Submissions are preferred in electronic format through e-mail. Please send submissions in “.txt” or “.doc” format only.

Articles and letters to the editor must be typed.

The Cascade reserves the right to edit submissions for clarity and length. The Cascade will not print any articles that contain racist, sexist, homophobic or libellous content. The writer’s name and student number must be submitted with each submission. Letters to the editor must be under 250 words if intended for print. Only one letter to the editor per writer in any given edition.

Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of UFV, Cascade staff and collective, or associated members.

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NEWS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

MLA hopefuls on pipelines, education and transit MISSY SPADY

citizens in the community.

CONTRIBUTOR

UFV’s Political Science Student Association hosted the Abbotsford South all-candidates debate this past Monday. The debate was moderated by department head, professor Hamish Telford and held in room B101 of the Abbotsford campus.

Candidates present include John van Dongen running independently, Darryl Plecas for the BC Liberal Party, Lakhvinder Jhaj for the BC NDP Party, Marcus Halliday on behalf of BC Excalibur Party’s Patricia Smith, and Steve Findlay for the BC Marijuana Party. Questions fielded from the audience touched on education, transit issues between Fraser Valley cities and the environmental impact of installing new pipelines.

We’ve summarized their views below; please note that these are not exact quotes except unless otherwise stated.

What measurable steps are you going to take to reduce student debt loads, and make postsecondary education more affordable for students? van Dongen: Lever tuition appropriately to ensure students have adequate access to the courses they require in order to finish their degrees within four years, instead of five or more.

Plecas: Avoid increasing student fees, and find other ways to pay for education: “In those countries that access their natural resources in a big way, education is free.”

Jhaj: Invest in non-refundable

Image: Shane Potter/ SUS Prez

UFV played host to the Abbotsford South All Candidates Meeting on Monday, May 6. grants for recent high school graduates up to $1500 to get skill training.

Halliday: Introduce a program where students would receive education for five years (in similar fashion to the military) in order to complete their diplomas, followed by five years working for the government.

Findlay: Increase the funding for education and find other sources of income. Proposing both by smarter spending. The government found $10 million to arrest people for pot offences last year, when universities could have used that money for better purposes.

UFV students recently passed a referendum to provide a shuttle between Abbotsford and

Chilliwack campuses, what are your plans to take the responsibility of this off the shoulder of students? How do you feel about bringing light rail transit in the Fraser Valley?

Findlay: Abbotsford doesn’t have the kind of population density to support a light rail system; a bus system is more appropriate.

Halliday: There is a need for a transit connection. Mission has the West Coast Rail system, why not extend it over the bridge and in to Abbotsford and out to Chilliwack? This solves the issue of reliable transit between cities and allows for American tourists to shop at local businesses in Abbotsford.

Jhaj: Invest part of the carbon tax money on accessible transit around the province.

Lots of young people want to go downtown, and there isn’t always a designated driver so many rely on several transit trips in order to get home safely.

Plecas: It’s a crime that students have such difficulty moving from one campus to another.

More frequent transit is required, but is going to cost one way or another. There should be joint funding from the students, the university and the government to make this happen. van Dongen: The UFV shuttle is only point to point, and we still suffer on the community side of transit. Our system is half the size of Kelowna’s, which has an equivalent population. Transit density needs to go up, local MLA is responsible for creating an economic service to students and all

There have already been 78 leaks and spills on the trans mountain pipeline, how will your party ensure that our river and drinking water will remain safe from toxic chemicals being transported via that pipeline?

Findlay: Institute regulatory process that will approve or reject that proposition. Community activists, experts and ocommunity members should have the opportunity to bring their evidence to the tribunal for review before any decisions are made.

Halliday: Technology exists today to run fibre optic sensor cables down the line to detect leaks.

Install automated shut off values to reduce the risk of environmental contamination. It’s expensive but as profits per quarter are in the billions, it’s affordable.

Jhaj: Against the pipeline.

Clean drinking water is too precious to risk.

Plecas: Must be good to all people and the environment. Early warning system and response teams must be in place to ensure safety. van Dongen: Appropriate response protocols and prevention protocols must be in place and supported. Inspectors should work for the public. Not concerned about the cost as much as about getting [safety] right the first time. Pipelines need to respect our high quality farm land, and we have yet to see one that does.

Puppy room a rousing success

Bubblewrap, colouring pages and canine companionship

JESS WIND

THE CASCADE

It doesn’t take much to attract a roomful of stressed-out students – just some bubble wrap, freshly baked cookies and four-legged friends.

Students lined up in the hall outside B121 on April 17, waiting for the SUS puppy room to open.

They were met by the wagging tails of volunteer therapy dogs, plates of cookies and a table for colouring – all intended to help students relax and relieve the stress of final exams.

The St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog program provides certified dogs on a volunteer basis to the sick and the elderly. In this case, the dogs comforted stressed-out students.

Charline Derksen, department assistant in the Arts Advice Centre on campus, volunteers with the program and coordinated the event with SUS VP social Zach Soderstrom.

“I just went out and bought things like food and colouring pages and markers and bubble wrap and bubbles for people to play around with,” Soderstrom said of putting the event together. “We threw it all in the same room with the dogs and people really, really liked it.”

Image: UFV SUS / Facebook

Over 500 students visited the St. John Ambulance therapy dogs on campus during exams.

The event took place over three days from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. during the first week of exams.

Twelve different dogs and their owners cycled shifts in the room.

“Traditionally, we haven’t had a lot of events during exam time because we thought … people are too busy,” SUS president Shane Potter explained. “But I really like the idea of doing events that de-stress people and bring positive energy. People can pet a dog and it lowers the anxiety and frustration they’re experiencing with exams.”

Over 500 students came by the puppy room during its three days. Pairing the turnout with the low cost, SUS deems it one of their most successful events.

“The entire event cost us basically the food, so $100-150,” Potter said. “Just in cost per student ratio, it was extremely successful ... It proved that you don’t need to spend $5000 or $6000 or $7000 to have an event that students like.”

The puppy room is just the first of many events that reflect a new direction that SUS is taking with getting students engaged on

campus.

“The stuff I want to work on directly is focused more on low-key, laid-back events, as opposed to the big blowout concerts and pub nights,” Soderstrom said. “Not so much that I’m against those— I think they’re important—but I find that there are enough student groups and other people going out and doing them ... I would feel better myself working with them and helping to enable them to do it on their own.”

Soderstrom plans to support student groups in launching their

annual AfterMath parties like the Big Bang and Casino Royale while he coordinates movie nights and other smaller, low-cost events for students to enjoy.

Potter assures students that SUS will still be putting together the usual events through AfterMath, but also says students should expect to see new creative events coming from the society board of directors.

“We’re still going to have our concert days, we’re still going to have our AfterMath days,” Potter explained. “We’re still going to really engage AfterMath this year but we’re going to try to throw different events.”

Based on the positive reception from students, St. John Ambulance therapy dogs will be making more campus appearances for exams and for the Weeks of Welcome events in September. Next time SUS says they will be better prepared with more advertising, more food and more fun ways to take minds off of the three-hour exams promising to make or break your whole semester.

“The students have indicated to us that this is something they want to see every exam period,” Potter concluded, “and that’s something we’re going to do.”

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NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF Transgender women forced into men’s prisons in Canada REGINA (CUP) — When it comes to breaking the law, Canadians are classified into gender-segregated prisons based on genitalia rather than if a person considers themselves to be a man or a woman.

The University of Regina Justice Studies department held a screening in January of the documentary Cruel and Unusual which depicted the experiences of transgender women in American male prisons.

Transgender inmates face a similar situation in Canada.

“We don’t have anything that would protect those who are going through the transgender process, to assure that they would be placed in the prison which they would be transitioning into,” said Alisa Watkinson, professor of social work at the U of R campus in Saskatoon.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

SCIENCE ON PURPOSE

Moscow’s stray dogs: commuters and con artists GRIFFY VIGNERON THE CASCADE

In the Russian city of Moscow, it is not unusual to share your morning commute with a stray canine.

These street-savvy mutts are often spotted waiting for a train in the city’s underground metro stations. Some have even been seen transferring from one train to the next to get to their destination, usually the bustling downtown core of Moscow. Researchers hypothesize the dogs figured out how to navigate the transit by smell.

Navigating the metro system is only one of a variety of intelligent behaviours that the dogs display. Strays will wait for crosswalk lights to turn in order to cross roads safely, even when no

humans are present. Some dogs use their charm and cuddle up beside strangers with big hearts who can’t help but share their snacks. Other strays sneak up behind unsuspecting snackers and bark, startling them into dropping their food where the dog can gobble it up.

Moscow is home to approximately 26,000 strays, and about 500 of these dogs live in the city’s metro stations. Neuronov, a dog behaviour specialist in Moscow, told the Financial Times that these 500 or so “metro” dogs appear to exhibit the most intelligent behaviour.

So what is it precisely that makes these dogs so smart?

Andrei Poyarkov is a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution who has studied Moscow’s Strays for

the past 30 years. He noted to the Financial Times that he estimates only about three per cent of the stray dogs actually survive long enough to breed and pass on their genes. This implies the dogs that survive have to be extremely quick and intelligent in order to navigate the city. In turn, their offspring, having similar genes, should be equally as intelligent or more so, in order to out-do other dogs.

Poyarkov also told the Financial Times he noticed the dogs that survive appear to be “excellent psychologists ... [t]he dog will come to a little old lady, start smiling and wagging his tail, and sure enough, he’ll get food.”

Unlike a regular domestic dog, the metro strays are not prone to attachments to humans. While they will be friendly, unless look-

ing for a meal, they generally go out of the way to avoid humans and keep to themselves.

It appears that the dogs have evolved or adapted in accordance with the area in which they live, and by doing what they need to in order to survive in that environment – including taking the train.

In reality the dogs have more than surpassed simply surviving in their environment: they have practically become part of it.

The strays are known to keep the streets clean and keep the rats at bay.

There is even a Russian site dedicated to the metro dogs, where people post pictures of the dogs commuting alongside regular human commuters. It can be accessed at metrodog.ru.

Graffiti wall to become mural

With $46 million in funding cuts on the way, BC gov offers plan for universities to save money VANCOUVER (CUP) — As BC’s colleges and universities puzzle over how to deal with $46 million of funding cuts, the provincial government is trying to convince them to cozy up to each other.

The Ministry of Advanced Education is currently making proposals for post-secondary institutions to cut costs by combining services like information technology, purchasing and libraries.

But with the project still far away from implementation, some wonder whether it can save enough money to deal with $46 million in funding cuts to BC’s post-secondary sector over the next two years.

Called the Post-Secondary Administrative Service Delivery Project, external consultants Deloitte and Touche delivered a report in February identifying opportunities for universities to cut costs by sharing services.

Visual effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen dead at age 92 LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — Influential visual effects maker and animator Ray Harryhausen, who brought monsters, skeletons and mythological beasts to life for movies like “Jason and the Argonauts” long before computers took over the job, died Tuesday at age 92, his family said.

Harryhausen perfected the “stop-motion” technique that had been used in a small number of earlier films by others including special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien, who would become his mentor, in King Kong (1933).

Ray Bradbury, the American science fiction writer who was a lifelong friend, said, “Harryhausen stands alone as a technician, as an artist and a dreamer.”

Image: Blake McGuire/The Cascade

BLAKE MCGUIRE THE CASCADE

Just about anyone who attended Robert Bateman Secondary School knows about the infamous “grad wall,” a small wall about a block away from the school on Laburnum Avenue at Palfy Park.

Past graduating classes have graffitied the wall every year, and

the city responds by repainting it the original shade of gray.

However, recently students have taken to making the wall a memorial for students who have passed away, instead of scrawling messages such as “boobies” and “grad xxxx.”

This trend of honouring fallen students is exemplified by Cheryl McCormack, who died in 2011.

For the past two years the wall has been almost entirely dedicated to her, and was also the location of a candlelight vigil shortly after her death Now the dilemma of painting over the graffiti has taken a new turn.

Sherry Dunn, a fine arts teacher at Bateman, has spearheaded a memorial mural for all of the de-

ceased students, featuring each of their favourite animals or plants and staying in line with the strong nature themes of Mr. Robert Bateman himself. The project received a funding grant from Vibrant Abbotsford, and the idea is soon to become a reality; a “paint day” is scheduled for May 11.

A quick chat with Simon Gibson JOE JOHNSON

represent our citizens in the legislature.

addictions on crime and the social fabric of our communities.

Among a number of political hopefuls in the May 14 provincial election is UFV professor Simon Gibson. As well as being a member of the university’s school of business, Gibson has also served as a Councillor in the City of Abbotsford since the 1980s.

He also writes an officeplace column that appears in over 20 papers, and is an avid long distance runner. With less than a week left to campaign, Gibson now has his eye on the Abbotsford-Mission riding as a member of the BC Liberals.

Getting close to the election, what have your hot topic issues turned out to be?

The Waste to Energy incinerator proposed by Metro Vancouver is totally unacceptable for our Fraser Valley residents. I pledge to work as MLA to have the plan scrapped.

Other issues: health care and education funding are critical at this time. Many students are turned away from UFV and I would like to investigate creative approaches to providing many more spaces particularly for trades and job-ready programs.

Both Abbotsford and Mission have serious social issues related to drug addiction. As MLA, I would offer to serve on a team approach to address the problem and the tragic consequences of

How do you plan to win the election? What is your primary strategy, a strong ground game?

We are using a strategic approach through listening to constituents and building bridges with hundreds of individuals, groups and organizations.

THE CASCADE

Why do you want to represent the people in the AbbotsfordMission riding?

I have strong local government experience and have proven that I am a good listener, a hard worker and a problem-solver. I love our community and would like to

What are some of the challenges of running in such a large geographical riding?

The riding is quite large but, unlike remote northern ridings, it is easily accessed by car. I have been travelling throughout the entire riding and have been welcomed wherever I go! My civic and regional experience gives me a strong profile in Mission and Abbotsford.

There are seven candidates,

including five different parties and independents, running in the riding. How do you expect this is going to shake down in terms of support?

It is healthy for democracy to have so many candidates: it will be good for residents to see the personal and ideological differences between me and the others.

If you are elected to the provincial government how will you advocate for the people in Abbotsford-Mission?

I have been regarded as an independent thinker on Abbotsford Council and that won’t change should I be elected as a BC Liberal MLA. Although I will be part of a team, I still believe an MLA must be advocate for the issues and concerns of constituents. I will take this very seriously!

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NEWS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

SUB shelved, Froese says student notice inadequate DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE

SUS’s second attempt at an April Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) was successful in quorum and unsuccessful in passing the main motion.

The crux of the meeting revolved around a two-page motion that, if passed, would authorize SUS to obtain a $10 million mortgage and break ground on the long-awaited Student Union Building (SUB).

This motion was originally ap-

proved in a 2011 referendum, but must be reapproved on a yearly basis. This ensures the student body, which changes on a yearly basis, continues to approve of the plan to build the SUB. Derek Froese, former president of Computer Information Systems Student Association (CISSA) at UFV, opposed the motion, stating that SUS failed to give adequate notice.

“This meeting had 13 days’ notice, and didn’t actually meet the requirements of notice under SUS bylaws,” Froese stated. “There

was not enough posters put up around [UFV] campuses.”

SUS bylaws state that notice must be posted on the SUS website, and also that at least 75 per cent of the maximum posters allowed by UFV poster policy must be put up around campus.

However, both this bylaw and Froese’s complaint refer to an older version of the UFV poster policy, which used to state a specific number of posters that may be posted per floor and per building. UFV policy currently states that “[m]aterial may be placed

Former student hired as first-ever United Way liaison at UFV KATHERINE GIBSON

favour, with Froese and several other students voting against it.

SUS has called another EGM for May 17, and the same motion will be approached at that time.

Other business at the meeting included passing a motion requiring SUS to call a general meeting if one per cent of the student body signs a petition to ask for it, passing a motion to require SUS to increase the detail of their meeting minutes, and a motion that bars SUS from permanently closing AfterMath unless by special resolution at a general meeting.

“Competition is rough”

Students vie for internship in The Freshman competition

KATIE STOBBART

philosophy minor who runs a

THE CASCADE small business through the Ab-

CONTRIBUTOR

In the midst of frantic essaywriting and late-night cram sessions, getting involved with local communities is an aspect of university life that students often overlook – but not Jessica Griffiths.

A recent graduate from UFV’s hospitality and event planning program, Griffiths worked this year as a student liaison for the United Way (UW) charity, an organization that oversees the collection of donations to smaller non-profit groups.

“This was a brand new position that [UFV] created this year,” Griffiths explains. “The university provided the funding for a four-month contract, in order to test the student response to being involved with this organization.”

During her contract, Griffiths was able to create a small committee of students eager to help UW. One of the main events that this group was able to accomplish was a toonie drive.

“At [UFV’s] trades campus, we stood on either side of the cafeteria line,” she says, “and gave students the option to donate any extra change that they had.”

Griffiths and other volunteers were able to collect $140 worth of toonies in half an hour This kind of student response and support leads Jessica to believe that students are eager to give.

However, it is not the financial collections that Griffiths feels is most vital to her liaison position or to students involvement with UW. “I think the main focus should be about spreading awareness,” she explains. “That way students

on the notice boards as space is available.”

“I can assure you that we did put up posters,” SUS president Shane Potter responded. “I put them up myself on the Abbotsford campus, 14 days in advance.”

Froese attempted to amend the motion to remove the clause stating that SUS gave its members adequate notice of the meeting. This amendment failed.

However, the main motion was likewise unsuccessful. It needed a 75 per cent “yes” vote to pass, but received just under 70 per cent in

Image: Jessica Griffiths

Griffiths connected UFV to community charities. know how much UW does for our local communities and how many people they are helping, and will be able to help in the future.”

Beyond simply aiding the UW’s chartable actions, her involvement with this charity has also left a lasting mark on her own personal life. “[This experience] has changed me for the rest of my life,” Griffiths says. “I will always keep in contact with the people I have met at the charities.”

“I was completely honoured to

have met the people that I did,” she continues, “and I know that if everyone got the chance to see what I have seen and hear the stories that I have heard – students would want to be involved.”

The UW liaison position will continue into the next school year,and Griffiths is optimistic about what the new liaison will accomplish.

“I’ve planted the seeds,” she says. “My hope now is that someone will get the opportunity to water them.”

Young job-seekers often find themselves between a rock and a hard place: employers want to hire people with experience in the field, but students cannot get experience in a field unless employers hire and train them.

Recognizing this, the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre (AESC) and the Abbotsford News (along with a number of other local businesses) have partnered to create a contest, which exclusively targets UFV students as contestants competing for a summer internship at the AESC. Formerly named The Intern, the contest is now called The Freshman.

Over the course of the contest, 20 students will work in pairs with local business sponsors to design a marketing plan, a fullpage newspaper ad and a minute-long commercial. Each team also works with a charity to organize a fundraiser.

UFV students and the general public are invited to vote against teams they want to fire. By the end of the contest two months from now, a single winner will be announced. The prize is the AESC internship, plus $5000.

“The competition is rough,” contestant Chainelle Stanley admits, after meeting the other contestants and being assigned partners and sponsors on April 29. “There were teams who were open and had fun ... but the majority were focused. They were having fun, but the atmosphere was definitely competitive.”

Stanley and her partner Diego Barreto will be working with Jag’s MJM Furniture, a familyrun business in Abbotsford.

Stanley is an English major and

botsford Flea Market.

“Every individual I am up against has skills and knowledge that I don’t have. Diego is highly skilled in music and filming, which I know nothing about,” Stanley says. “I am go, go, go.

I am hoping my unique perspective and love of organizing events plays out in my favour.”

Each contestant has a blog on storify.com, and some have already begun to document their progress in the first week of competition.

The ads and commercials each team creates will also be available for the public to view. Voting is done online, and each IP address has 10 votes per day, each vote counting against (not for) a team.

The contest itself provides invaluable experience for students, Stanley says.

“I have learned how to compromise and work on the spot,” she notes. “Our sponsors have been open and patient with Diego and I figuring things out in a short time. This competition offers experience and a solid network I hope to apply to the rest of my life.”

This is the third year that the contest will run. You can support your favourite competitors by following their progress through the “AbbyNews” and “The Freshman” pages on Facebook. Updates will also appear in the Abbotsford Times, and through contestants’ individual Facebook, Twitter and blog pages. Judges will also note levels of support for businesses and charities involved in the contest, which can help contestants who make it to the top six.

Interested in journalism? Have a passion for news reporting?

Love working with writers on the cusp of a story?

The Cascade is hiring for the position of

NEWS EDITOR Duties include assigning, collecting, editing and laying out the content of the news section of the Cascade;

supervising the news writer and ensuring that staff and volunteers have the resources and abilities to produce good news copy; finally, ensuring that issues relevant to students are presented in his/her section, particularly issues surrounding the Student Union Society and campus events.

We aren’t going to lie to you: it’s a lot of work. But it just might be the most rewarding job you’ve ever had.

Find more information at ufvcascade.ca/employment or email Dessa@ufvcascade.ca

6

OPINION

Curtailed commentary on current conditions

SNAPSHOTS

OPINION

Riley Nowlan

Nick Ubels

Off the leash

The sport of kings is a lesson in persistence

I love dogs. I’m a dog person.

However, you couldn’t possibly know this by looking at me. In fact, you can’t assume that any person you pass on a walk or at the park likes dogs. This simple fact is why dogs need to be kept on a leash in public.

Very few things annoy me more then when I’m going for a run, headphones in, music blaring and suddenly a dog comes charging towards me. Or when I am walking my easily-irritated dog (who never leaves her leash or my side) and another dog comes bounding towards us, sending her into a defensive panic.

They tell me, “Don’t worry, my dog’s nice! He’s just being playful.” Well that’s great for you but my dog isn’t nice or playful. This habit is especially irritating as there are lots of off-leash dog areas to choose from.

Bottom line? There is no way of knowing if you are going to pass someone who’s had a bad experience with dogs, a child who is just plain scared of dogs, or another dog who’s just not as “friendly” as yours. So please, for others’ safety and my sanity, keep your dog on a leash.

Every year it’s the same. After a winter of very little athletic activity, let alone racquet sports, my first trip to one of the local tennis courts always goes surprisingly well, considering my six months of zero practice. I now realize it goes well precisely because I don’t go for the smashes or wild serves, but keep my game simple.

The problems always start during my second game. With freshlyboosted confidence, I’m suddenly attempting shots that I could barely make by the end of the previous summer’s weekly matches.

Overconfidence and inexperience inevitably result in one of the most frustrating outings of the year.

Other sports and activities seem to be more forgiving. You know, “you never forget how to ride a bike,” and all that. Springtime tennis is aggrevating because of the discrepancy between my current skill level and what I think I should be doing, what I think makes good tennis strategy.

After a few matches, my outlook starts to get a little more positive.

With a little humility and time commitment, I can already see my game improving. And as much as this is a frustrating experience, it’s actually something I kind of value.

Tennis is my yearly reminder that persistence pays off. It’s something I need to keep in mind not just in tennis, but in every new experience or creative pursuit.

There’s always a gap between what you’re doing and the sort of thing that inspired you to do it in the first place. But with time, effort and many failed attempts, your work can finally begin to resemble the quality you seek.

Image: photoscott/flickr.com

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Dessa Bayrock

Amy Van Veen

The mystically entic- Shoo fly, seriously, get ing “youth vote” out of my face I have a favourite phrase that pops up around election season without fail, and it is “the youth vote.” It’s like young people are a mystical and untapped resource— some kind of super-rare and useful mineral, like unobtanium or kryptonite—that no one can really figure out how to safely mine or process.

Even if no one quite knows what to do with it or how to get it, the idea of “the youth vote” is appealing. Imagine if a politician could inspire young people to vote en masse – as though the polls are a cult, or a new bar, or a prerequisite for a class that everyone wants to take.

However, measuring “the youth vote” in any great quantity is as rare and as unlikely as a unicorn.

I’ve heard less and less about the magic demographic with each passing election, be it provincial or federal.

But I think I’ve figured out why.

There is no such thing as “the youth vote.” Young people are, at the end of the day, just people – and just like any demographic, the 18-24 age range is going to be split a dozen ways between political parties. To imply that a politician could inspire the majority of young people to vote a certain way is not only wrong, but offensive. It’s ageist. You can’t lump us all together. You can’t assume that we all think the same way. We can barely agree on where to eat lunch, let alone organize ourselves to vote as a bloc.

The idea of “the youth vote” is shrouded in mystery because it is non-existent.

And that isn’t a bad thing.

Flies tend not to listen to “shoo fly” commands.

They also don’t really care when you swat your hands manically. If they were capable of a sense of humour, I imagine they’d laugh their wings off when you slapped yourself in the face.

What is it about those little guys that makes my blood boil?

They’re there when I try to drink some juice. They’re there when I try to eat my dinner. They’re there when I try to fall asleep. And it often seems like the same little guy buzzing around trying to ruin my day.

And I’m ashamed to admit that he often succeeds.

The choice is there: either close all the windows and doors and slowly turn my home into a sweat lodge as the outside temperatures rise or swing those things open and invest in the best fly swatter money can buy while slowly being driven mad by the buzzing.

There are pros and cons to both options. Although the solution to the latter seems more simple: turn up the music and hope the stupid little guy finds his way out one of the many open windows instead of banging into the glass of the closed ones.

Harper won’t study terrorists because he is to blame JOEL SMART

THE CASCADE

Justin Trudeau, the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, was asked about the recent terrorist activities shortly after they occurred. His response included one statement that drew ire from our current prime minister, Stephen Harper. Trudeau said that he felt we needed to study and better understand what causes terrorism in the first place. That might sound reasonable to you, but Harper was beside himself. His absurd response was that this isn’t a time to ask questions, this isn’t a time to think, to “commit sociology” if you will, but instead, it’s a time to act, a time to return fire with fire, to catch the crooks and use punishment as the ultimate deterrent.

The reason Harper took such a stance is actually pretty clear – Harper has no intention of catering to minority groups who might be pushed into hard lives; he has no intention of improving the social services that keep troubled peo-

ple from acting desperately. Here is a leader who muzzles his own party leaders, who supports an electoral system that ignores most of the votes, who pushes through massive omnibus bills filled with environment-destroying legislation, simply because that’s what he wants. That’s what will bring in the quickest profit – even if it means selling the natural resources we rely on to other countries, removing protection for streams and wildlife in the process. If the government is about to go to vote in a way he doesn’t like – he’ll just suspend Parliament to dodge the vote. And when a First Nations leader like Chief Theresa Spence wants to schedule an important meeting with Harper about the survival of her people, she has to go on a 44-day hunger strike while our glorious leader traipses about, too busy to meet because he’s posing in photo ops with panda bears.

Harper doesn’t want you to think. He doesn’t want to draw back the curtain on his government. Pay no attention to what’s

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Harper (left) accused Trudeau (right) of “committing sociology.” behind there, he shouts in an effort to protect the illusion of the Great Oz, the great Harper government ... the great country of Canada.

“Go back to your hockey game, your TV shows, don’t you worry, we’ll catch the bad guys and we’ll hurt them real bad for what they did. Now now, it was only a bad dream. Back to sleep now.”

I’m not suggesting Justin

Trudeau is any great improvement as a possible leader, but “committing sociology,” daring to ask the question “why,” is the sign of someone with at least a tad more foresight than our current leader seems to be capable of.

Harper would like us all to believe that terrorists are not real people with complex emotions and motivations. He wants us to

believe that they’re like the villains of a poorly-written novel – they’re so evil because they’re such bad people, and they’re bad people because of how evil they are.

Harper’s recent choice to throw sociology—the study of human society and all of its interlinking parts—under the bus brings to mind his party’s recent decision to muzzle scientists by voting against evidence-based policy-making (and science more generally). As a sociology major myself, I can only hope this stance is not a sign of things to come.

Sociology is something we should be embracing – it’s a way to understand and improve our social problems, not something that distracts or holds us back as a people. If we better understood terrorism, we could have less terrorism (or at least a better handle on it). But Harper doesn’t want to ask why. He doesn’t want to study the root causes and the reason is very simple. Stephen Harper is a major part of the problem.

7

OPINION

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Low price, high cost: shopping ethically after Bangladesh ANTHONY BIONDI THE CASCADE

The state of our economy and the ever-present demands of the consumer market have driven us to buy products at the lowest possible price. This includes clothing, food, toiletries or anything, really.

Since so much of our money is tied up now in what we want, what we need becomes a quest for the cheapest acquisition.

Some time ago, Nike was accused of using sweatshop labour to manufacture their shoes. Despite the cheap labour costs, they still charged more than some lowerend shoe companies. Because their brand is well known, many people paid for and wore the label. Consumers of Nike, in an attempt to wear the latest in the brand’s line, were unknowingly supporting this sweatshop labour. When this scandal came to light, it made people more conscious of exactly where their products come from.

Even now we have to ask ourselves the question: where are our products coming from? If a t-shirt can be sold for $5, how much did it cost to produce?

Recently, a fire in a Bangladesh factory raised these questions, again. After the deaths of several employees, it came to the public’s attention that the products we buy

are being produced in less than savoury work conditions. Several major retailers were buyers from this factory, including Wal-Mart.

According to an article by Jessica Wohl in The Globe and Mail, the major retailer had no idea they were even buying from this factory. This statement could have been said for many different reasons (whether it is true, or they are covering up something), but the reality of it is, we don’t know where our products truly come from.

This idea frightens me a little.

Since the Bangladesh fire, we once again look to these sweatshop conditions. I think back to all the shirts that I have bought over the years that carry the label Made in Bangladesh. In a way, by buying that product, I helped support that working community of abused labourers. Every penny I put into the foreign market can be a gamble, either supporting a decent factory supplier or one that maintains poor working conditions. And the only reason I support this gamble is because it is so affordable for me. It is easy enough to blame the economy and the high living costs we face, but who is really at fault?

If it had not been for the fire, many of us would continue buying our products entirely unaware of their origins. It seems that only

Image: Abir Abdullah/flickr.com

What responsibilities do consumers have in their purchasing habits? when disaster strikes or some breakthrough discovery is made, that we ever think about the working conditions of those who produce our conveniences. There are groups that make an effort to constantly bring awareness, but this is only on a limited scale. The majority of the public will still continue on buying what they want and need regardless. Even when Apple factories were shown to be negligent in the safety of their production employees we still went on buying the latest iPhone and iPad. In this way, we show our implicit approval of these practices.

That being said, it is not entirely our problem either. We buy because much of the time there aren’t other options. It can be costly to buy quality or local goods, and being college students, this would put us over the deep end financially. However, companies like Wal-Mart have taken the initiative to put large sums of money into training programs and schools to further the education of their production employees. After the fire in Bangladesh, according to The Globe and Mail, the factory owner offered over $1.5 billion to open training facilities to improve the safety of

their factory employees. This is quite a responsible step forward by the company. In fact, others have joined them in this cause.

But is this really enough? Companies could always consider putting money back into local goods rather than overseas imports. This takes a lot of pressure off of the sweatshops, since they would no longer be in as high demand. I look to countries like Italy that have put forward initiatives to support local farmers. Is it so impossible for us to follow in those bold footsteps?

International companies, such as Wal-Mart, do put some consideration into supporting local goods, but I think there should be a greater emphasis on it.

A sweater sewn in Canada would feel that much warmer.

The truth of it is this: we are both responsible for these sweatshop factories. The large companies that buy from them, and the consumers for purchasing those products. In the end, we as consumers should always be cautious of what we buy, paying attention to who supplies it and at what cost. Be wary of products that cost less than they should, or items that are poorly manufactured. They may be the result of such working factories. Only with knowledge can we choose to support those that deserve it.

My fairly unbiased two cents on an All-Candidates Meeting DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE

I was either lucky or bored enough to attend the Abbotsford South All-Candidates Meeting last Monday night. It’s not that I don’t like politics—I’ve attended enough SUS meetings to at least get a taste for policy and political promises—but the meeting was a purely theoretical exercise from my point of view because I’ll be voting in a Chilliwack riding on May 14.

On the other hand, I think that this puts me in a position to offer my advice to Abbotsford-southers.

I’m an outsider looking in. I share many of the concerns discussed by these candidates, but I will ultimately be voting for none of them.

Five candidates came to the meeting: Marcus Halliday (Excalibur), Steve Finlay (Marijuana), Lakhvinder Jhaj (NDP), Darryl Plecas (Liberal) and John van Dongen (Independent).

At this point I would say the front-runners are easily Plecas and van Dongen, with Jhaj trailing in third.

Plecas and van Dongen are both knowledgeable and experienced fellows, and to be quite honest I’ll be happy to see either of them in office. Plecas has a strong foundation in criminal law and community politics through years’ worth of work as RCMP Research Chair at UFV. He has an utter no-nonsense attitude about him that is refreshing in politicking. Asked for his thoughts about the price of postsecondary schooling, he noted that cutting student fees means cutting the funding that universities have to work with. That being said, he sees the need to return to a world where student loans are forgivable, and maybe even moving towards the European model of treating post-secondary education as a resource and offering free tuition to students.

Image: Shane Potter/ UFV Prez

Abbotsford-south candidates open up in questions delivered by students and community-members at UFV Plecas has strong ties to the UFV community, which is a pro (in my eyes) but that also made it extremely surprising that he was completely unaware of the student shuttle that will be implemented between Chilliwack and Abbotsford in September. He talked at some length about how there should be transportation between the two campuses, when his proposed solution is already a reality.

I think that van Dongen has an advantage over Plecas in a couple of ways. On the topic of transportation, he had the specifics of the shuttle close to hand and recognized both SUS and university involvement in the project. He has years of direct experience in politics, while still exhibiting the cut-

the-political-bullshit attitude that makes Plecas so approachable.

His decision to run as an independent rather than a liberal is a strong one, and in an age where candidates vote exclusively according to party decision, he offers flexibility and the chance to directly represent the needs of Abbotsford.

Jhaj seemed the most reliant on buzzwords and fluff when relating her points, which frankly bothered me. I’m also sick of politicians (including Jhaj) highlighting their family history as an example of their family values. I would say that most well-adjusted people can showcase family ties; the fact that you’ve been married and had kids does not necessarily make you a good politician.

I’m sure that she’ll still get a size-

able chunk of votes, because a lot of people seem to be supporting NDP these days. I know that the NDP is promising change, but I’m having a hard time seeing how – their promise of funding for skills training is certainly nothing new, and that was the only point that I heard Jhaj really stress during the meeting. She has plenty of experience on committees and in government bodies, so she’s not a bad choice, but much of her experience seems to be centred in her previous Okanagan community. Personally, I would rather see someone in office who lives and has experience in Abbotsford.

That leaves us with the less-likely candidates: Halliday (Excalibur) and Finlay (Marijuana).

Halliday, in short, is adorable.

The Excalibur party is new this year, and was founded as an alternative to voting for the biggername parties. According to its mantra, it stands for truth, honour and justice. Do the six Fraser Valley Excalibur candidates have a chance of getting voted in? Hypothetically, yes. Realistically, no.

Halliday is easily the youngest candidate in the riding, and I would guess also the most naïve and inexperienced. He can’t be older than 22 or 23, and his sheepish grin and idealistic values are sure to melt hearts everywhere. He has a wonderfully refreshing enthusiasm – but from what I can see, no real experience or plan behind the dreams. He would campaign for more transit options in the Valley, and some kind of funding program to help university students pay for school. Admirable? Yes. Adorable?

Definitely. Naïve? Extremely. If he sticks with the Excalibur idea and stays in tune with BC politics long enough to catch the next election, he’ll have more of an idea of what he’s doing and how to do that. Until then, I’m afraid his votes will be few and far between.

Finlay, of the Marijuana party, is highly unlikely to gain office due to the controversy surrounding the party goal of legalizing the Valley’s most popular herb. We know it; he knows it. Rather than use the campaign as a platform to further these beliefs, however, Finlay used his inclusion at the debate to criticize and commend the front-running candidates as needed, pointing out holes in logic and offering suggestions to streamline plans. As the meeting progressed, my respect for him grew. This is the kind of affable, reasonable candidate that I would want to see in office, although I don’t think the world is quite ready to accept a Marijuana Party candidate just yet.

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OPINION

OPINION

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

If you build it, they will come ... to drink beer MISSY SPADY

CONTRIBUTOR

Colorado State University’s student centre plans to be the first to install an on-campus brewery.

Control your in-tandem drooling, college folk, there’s more.

On top of that, a major in fermentation science and technology in the department of Food Science and Human Nutrition has recently been added to the school’s curriculum. Can we just soak up the ramifications of these words for a moment? Potentially endless amounts of delicious beer brewed within walking distance, and the skills, nay, a degree in how to do it yourself. I personally know a handful of people who are kicking themselves for not being born in Colorado right now.

Who isn’t going to get behind an on-campus brewery? It’s frothy, ice cold and brewed in-house.

Aside from beer, fermentation courses include the processing of dairy, wheat, beef, pork, lamb and grapes, and an in-house brewery

Image: mfajardo/ flickr.com

Colorado U hopes to introduce a student centre brewery soon. would be extremely beneficial to the student body. There are plenty of community breweries that house field trips; having the equipment on campus would allow for more hands-on experience to students in

the program.

A space is reserved in the recent facelift of the student centre for the brewery to go right next to the campus bar, The Ramskeller.

Plans indicate there will be a glass

Sunscreen will always be gross AMY VAN VEEN THE CASCADE

The sun is shining and the mercury is rising – and yes, I’m aware of the fact that thermometres use red-dyed alcohol and not mercury; it’s a figure of speech.

And with these hotter temperatures and bluer skies come dozens of nagging warnings to use sunscreen. Research articles are written, campaigns are created and mothers everywhere are humiliating children with reapplication of the greasy summertime product.

It’s no wonder, then, when I put on the good old SPF that the scent brings me back to beach-side afternoons as a kid being forced to endure the torture of white, oilbased smear going from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. Even now, the need to use sunscreen to avoid rising diagnoses of melanoma becomes a battle of whether or not I want to put up with that greasy feeling and childlike smell of sunscreen.

Granted, there are now many products that try to disguise the smell and greasy feeling under layers of added fragrances and “dry touch” promises. You can get it in an aerosol spray – but it seems to only last two applications before quickly running out and begs the question of environmental harm.

You can get it in a stick form – which seems to be more like an allover deodorant. And now you can even get powder foundations and hair products promise SPF protection.

Why do we need all this extra packaging and sophisticated marketing for something as basic as sunscreen?

Because it’s gross. Beauty companies know it’s gross. Marketers know it’s gross. And we certainly know it’s gross.

Sunscreen will always be a reminder of childhood humiliation.

When no one listens to our complaints of grossness, we question the very legitimacy of SPF, even as melanoma numbers rise and people think a good use of time and energy is sitting in tanning beds.

But we still ask – is SPF preventing

wall between the two rooms to allow viewing of production classes at work. The brewery will be used primarily for training students to craft beer and ferment other foods, but the executive director of the centre, Michael Ellis, isn’t ruling out the possibility of the beer produced being served at the campus bar.

“What could be better than sitting in The Ramskeller, watching brewers at work?” Ellis told Coloradoan.com. “I think it is very unique, and that’s what makes it special.”

Despite the support, academic need, and space reservation, funding for the equipment—around half a million dollars—has yet to be secured.

I’m wondering why we don’t have anything like this in British Columbia. God knows we have the community interest and demand. There are wineries littered all across the Lower Mainland and Okanagan, and Vancouver is home is several microbreweries as well. Yet, there is no such thing as

a fermentation science degree in BC. What about the future brewers of Canada? Will they be left to illegally brew moonshine in their bathtubs in order to get real brewing experience? Craft beer is booming right now, and the West Coast is well-known for its hipster credibility by always being at the cutting edge. I think this is a train we ought to hop onto.

I do happen to know a certain university that has plans for a new Student Union Building (SUB) in the works. Perhaps with some gentle prodding, an on-campus brewery could be the newest addition to UFV. The plans for the SUB building are looking rather dry, wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Potter? Who needs a used bookstore, give me a fountain of endless beer! This plot certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the space in question is conveniently stationed right next to the new Cascade office. Nope, just a happy coincidence.

Are you the kind of person to be driven mad by missing apostrophes? Do you cringe when you read an article that uses American spelling instead of the spelling of the Great White North? Do you frequently get into arguments with friends about the proper use of “its”?

Good news!

The Cascade is hiring for the position of

COPY EDITOR

Image: ChameleonGreen/ flickr.com

From a young age, sun screen application is a hated ritual. us from getting enough vitamin D? Are the numbers arbitrarily assigned for the sake of marketing?

Is SPF 15 really any different from SPF 60?

We foolishly justify our darker skin that doesn’t feel greasy or smell weird. We sit outside and burn, telling ourselves it’s just a base tan. Freckles and moles pop up, but we ignore them hoping the one that has a similar shape to Florida is just a benign anomaly.

The alternative to this extreme is a daily application of SPF-riddled beauty products that feel a little icky and smell a little funky.

It’s almost too easy to take on the ignorance is bliss approach to sunny day skincare. The big C word happens to other people, af-

ter all. All I do is sit in the backyard in SPF-less hopes of achieving tan lines.

I mean, sure, there was that one questionable mole I had to have removed. And, yeah, it is a little embarrassing having my six-yearold nephew sternly tell me, “Sunscreen is **not the enemy of your body. Sunburns are.” And old tan people look more like their leather purses than actual human beings.

I suppose sunscreen isn’t too bad.

And the greasy feeling doesn’t last forever.

And the smell usually fades.

Excuse me, I have to go to the drugstore and buy some Coppertone.

Duties include reading through and editing the entire paper checking for spelling, grammar and syntax errors according to the Canadian Press style guide (which will be provided); compiling and emailing the full paper to the executive editorial team; looking over the paper for a second time during final production, double-checking for any additional mistakes; and communicating with sectional editors and executive editorial team.

Find more information at ufvcascade.ca/employment or email Joel@ufvcascade.ca

9

OPINION

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

The library is no getaway for students KATIE STOBBART THE CASCADE

When we think of libraries, the first thing that often comes to mind is, “shh.” This has been drilled into us since our very first visit to a library: it is a place for quiet. Given this impression of the library as a place of complete silence, it is understandable that noise is a major cause for irritation.

I have filled out three different surveys asking what would make UFV’s library better. How can the library improve its services for students? The most recent survey had me wondering how many I will have to complete before I actually see significant improvements. One question asked whether I consider the library a getaway.

This earned a quick “no.” But why not? I like the concept – I have definitely needed a getaway spot to study in the past, somewhere comfortable and relatively quiet outside the house. But there are two main reasons I would not choose the library to fulfill that need and

which make the library feel unfriendly and unappealing.

The first is the seating. Rows of cubicle-style desks occupy most of the second floor. There are a few problems with these. They look intimidating. They are uncomfortable. It’s a bit depressing to stare at the wooden walls around your little postage stamp of space; studying feels arduous. They make our university appear dated and it is impossible to study with another person. No one wants to sit next to anyone else unless absolutely necessary. The seating just does not seem to represent one of the big themes at UFV: community. Each student sits in his or her own cubicle and cannot wait to get out.

The second issue is the atmosphere. Partly due to the seating and partly because of our expectation for libraries to be silent and imposing, the second floor feels uncomfortable. I become acutely aware of each tiny noise: how loudly am I breathing? How loud are my footsteps? Does it make more noise to slide the zipper on my bag

Image: University of the Fraser Valley/ flickr.com

The Peter Jones Learning Centre could use a more human touch. open as slowly as possible, or is it better to tear it open like I would rip off a bandage? Forget chatting in the stacks – just opening my bag feels like a heinous distraction for other library users. I can almost feel the glares from behind the wooden cubicle walls.

Here are my suggestions to make the library a “getaway” for students.

Chop the cubicles into firewood.

Maybe save a few for those who really love to use them, but apply a liberal coat of paint.

Plant some comfortable seating and tables in the space the desks currently occupy. Get rid of the rows and make the second floor an appealing place to settle in for a few hours and get some serious studying done.

Keep the main area as a quiet zone, but transform the private study rooms into group-study zones, also equipped with comfortable seating. There can be a balance between the total silence of the stacks and the roar of cafeteria noise. If space is allowed for stu-

dents to have quiet conversation, this should cut down on sound levels in the quiet zone. The library at another university I attended, though admittedly larger, had different areas for different noise levels, and it worked well.

The library should be a comfortable place to study. A couple of classmates should be able to go there and talk quietly. When students think of the library, the first thing that comes to mind shouldn’t be, “shh.”

I’m tired of being shushed off campus for making minimal noise.

The only places indoors I can actually sit with another person are the equally uncomfortable cafeteria or in the middle of a hallway. I am as annoyed as anyone else when someone strikes up a loud conversation about their weekend plans in a quiet-only area, but sometimes people need to talk about their work, and the library needs to find solutions that work for all students, not just the few who love silent cubicles.

Group assignments: Lack of public spaces a worthy pursuit or a crock of crap? hurts Abbotsford KAYLA ST. LOUIS

STEWART SEYMOUR

Get fucked, group work. Or more specifically, group assignments. No one should have their own marks suffer because of the clowns they were put into a group with.

At all levels of education, teachers and professors alike almost always insist on group work of some kind. However, I think I can break down the big misunderstanding about group work by making a distinction between a group discussion (the sharing of ideas) and a group assignments (compiling shared ideas for marks).

I like group discussion because it allows you to hear other perspectives and engage the content in ways that you would have never entertained if you were working solo. It forces you to make meaning of course content for yourself rather than relying on your instructor for all the answers. It’s also easier for people who are somewhat shy to be able to share their ideas in a more comfortable setting of a few faces instead of the entire room.

Plus, you get to meet new people and find some buddies in your class who you can get notes from if you miss a day. Everybody wins.

But this is where that distinction comes in because that’s not always the reality, is it? We students know that a well-executed group discussion rarely happens – it heavily depends on the willingness of that particular group of students, not to mention the course content and the professor. Often, when group work is introduced into the classroom, the instructor makes it a group assignment instead of a group discussion, which, as we all know, means that other people’s lack of effort can and will negatively impact your own grades.

And frankly, it’s a crock of crap.

I hate group assignments with every fibre of my being. I don’t know if everyone’s experience with group assignments is the same as mine, or whether I’ve just always ended up with shitty

Public spaces in cities serve people in a number of ways. From providing a place for recreation, congregation or simply a place for relaxation and enjoyment, public spaces are essential to the life and vitality of the city and its dwellers.

Used correctly, these spaces can work to enhance the culture and economic wellbeing of the surrounding area. Abbotsford seems to lack these sorts of locations.

The city of Abbotsford does boast of a number of places for recreation. Mill Lake is a great place for anyone including all ages and socio-economic backgrounds. You can cycle, boat, fish or picnic with the family. The International Friendship Garden is a neatly tucked away space near the Clearbrook Library; it serves as a quiet and refreshing place to relax.

Throughout the city of Abbotsford, there are a number of nature trails to remind dwellers nature is close by.

However, Abbotsford is a city best travelled by car, not by foot.

Public transportation in Abbotsford, while least likely to be the worst in the country, is still quite draconian. As a result, public spaces are few and far apart. How likely is it for an employee to enjoy their lunch in a plaza of sorts?

Where exactly is the town square?

Where may someone enjoy a coffee without the obstructing view of an expansive parking lot? There are roughly 140,000 Abbotsford residents, yet from how expansive the city is, you think more people might actually live here. Despite Abbotsford being confined by surrounding farmland and its picturesque mountains, this city continues to build outward. There seems to be little effort on the behalf of the city to slow suburban development. Intensification of these efforts is needed if public places are to thrive.

The core of Abbotsford is the historic downtown district. While the efforts that have been made to

THE CASCADE

CONTRIBUTOR

Image: Susan NYC/ flickr.com

Unlike most class groups, this one seems rather productive. groups, but I cannot stand them.

Any group assignment I have ever done has left a bad taste in my mouth, if not ended in complete disaster.

In one class, my group conspired to pretend I wasn’t a part of the group at all, and then dumped a good chunk of the assignment on me at the last second without warning. I had an assignment for another class where my partner told me at 7 p.m. that she needed my contributions by 7:15 p.m. so that she could finish putting things together before her 8 p.m. bedtime.

As a result, she was well-rested for our presentation the next day with her 16 hours of sleep, whereas I had scraped maybe three hours at most for myself and felt like death was upon me. Oh, and by the next class, she dropped out. Go figure.

What was the last straw? A little while ago, I had been working on a group assignment for one of my classes and my group had allotted each person with different duties which everyone agreed upon beforehand. Things were looking good, and everything was going just swimmingly. But then, at the

last minute, I found out my group had been emailing me stuff to the wrong address, and simultaneously dumped the largest portion of writing on me the day before it was due. Come on, guys. If you couldn’t do what you said you could from the beginning, then why the crap did you volunteer to do so in the first place? Suddenly, everyone else was busy with their other assignments, midterms and presentations.

This ain’t my first rodeo so I didn’t bite off more than I could chew from the start and managed my time accordingly. Due to their own poor time management, both of my group members decided that they were incapable of doing any more and left it up to me to clean up their mess. The way they decided this was through emails that didn’t include me since they used the wrong email address. I mean, come on!

I could have just not done it. But then my marks would have suffered. And so, once again, I found myself picking up the slack of my genius group members’ lack of work ethic. Story of my life.

revitalize the downtown cannot be overlooked, there is still much more that can be done. There exist an abundance of underdeveloped properties that permeate the downtown and it would be a great place to consider the possibility of constructing public spaces.

The downtown already serves as the location for a number of festivals. For example, throughout every summer weekend, there is the Abbotsford Farmers Market.

As of right now, it takes place on a confined and squished parking lot at Trinity Western Church.

Now, if there was a plaza, the Abbotsford Farmers Market could be a little more out in the open and more accessible; everyone from consumers to businesses would benefit. It might seem like a radical idea, but converting Montrose or Essendene Avenue into a pedestrian walkway might actually benefit the downtown in a number of ways. An increase in pedestrian traffic can’t hurt.

Of course, the biggest obstacle is the financing. It is important to consider the overall returns that these public spaces may generate over the long term. It should also be considered that the cost would pale in comparison to a huge undertaking that was the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre, which has struggled to yield returns of any sort to the city of Abbotsford. Let’s go, Heat!

The decision of where to place public spaces can be tricky business. There are many people who would argue that public spaces have the potential to attract the worst kinds of people. There certainly are numerous examples throughout North America to back up that claim. It must be considered though, that if constructed within a mixed-use setting of commercial and residential buildings, these spaces can be well-utilized to benefit the city and its dwellers.

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ARTS & LIFE FEATURE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Forty-four awards. Fiv

Image: Dessa Bayrock / The Cascade

DESSA BAYROCK

THE CASCADE

My Juno journey started in March on a whim.

Curiosity drove me over to the Juno Awards website to take a gander at the list of nominees. It was a pretty solid list; Canada is practically bursting at the seams with musical talent. And then I found myself looking at the press page.

“Click here to apply for a press pass!” it said.

So I did.

And then they called my bluff by actually giving me a pass.

“Touché, Junos,” I said, as I spent my entire (if meagre) vacation fund on a plane ticket and hotel room. I couldn’t exactly say no, could I? That would be rude.

This is how my jam-packed and five-day Juno journey began.

“I’ve never been to Regina, but how bad could it be?” I reassured myself, before I took a look at the below-zero temperature expectations for the week.

So what are these Juno Awards, anyway?

For starters, it needs to be clarified that the often all-capped “JUNO” doesn’t actually stand for anything. The awards are named after Pierre Juneau, who was the first president of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (more fondly known as the CRTC, the star of many lower-level MACS courses). He was also the president of the CBC at one point. Basically, this fellow is the king of Canadian media.

He was a driving force behind stuff like Can-Con, making sure a certain amount of Canadian music makes it onto the radio and a certain amount of Canadian shows make it onto networks.

A variety of groups have organized the Junos over time. The shindig got started in 1970, when the magazine RPM turned their annual list of best-selling Canadian albums into a full-blown awards show. It was renamed the Junos in 1971, and a panel joined the process to decide awards unrelated to how well the artists or albums sold.

Image: Dessa Bayrock / The Cascade

Day one: planes, clouds and meeting Regina The day began at 4:30 a.m. when I left the house to catch my flight to Regina. After

heading to two wrong gates and attempting to get on the incorrect plane, I finally began the journey to Edmonton, and from there catch the connector to Regina.

As the plane left Edmonton on the final leg of the journey, the clouds beneath us looked like someone had ripped apart giant sofa cushions, leaving cotton stuffing everywhere.

I was disappointed to see a generous amount of snow on the ground when we finally descended through the cloud layer, but not really surprised.

Roads and rivers stretched out like the lines of an Etch-A-Sketch in every direction.

I was concerned at the lack of buildings.

“But where’s Regina?” I felt like begging the person next to me. “I don’t see any city!”

I expected something more akin to Vancouver than Chilliwack, but Regina is definitely on the small side of city size. That being said, it’s packed to the gills with Juno mania. Signage is posted on almost every surface – banners strung up in the airport, posters and leaflets gathering in corners like fallen leaves. My own frantic search to find last minute accommodations informed me that nearly every hotel, motel and hostel is booked up full until the following Wednesday.

I’ve never been to Saskatchewan before, but there’s a first time for everything. My initial impressions? Very flat. Very cloudy.

The people seem nice.

pened), and would play the day after in Q’s regular time slot on CBC Radio.

“I’m going to say, ‘Happy Friday,’” Ghomeshi warned, half-jokingly. “Now don’t you get confused by that! Any questions?”

The audience members looked around at each other, waiting for someone to ask a question. There were no questions.

“Go Riders!” one guy finally yelled. “‘Go Riders!’ is not a question, sir, but thank you for representing Regina,” Ghomeshi replied.

With that, we were off. The musical introduction built up into the familiar tones of Q and Ghomeshi dropped into his most seductive baritone voice.

“Well, hi there. Happy Friday – and happy Friday from the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan!”

In a nod to the Juno Awards, Ghomeshi interviewed Dragonette, Bahamas, k. d. lang, Tom Cochrane and Corb Lund. How’s that for a Canadian music mouthful?

After two hours of solid interviewing, broken up by musical performances, Ghomeshi wound the show down by thanking all the guests and the crew that mans Q behind the scenes.

But even when the show was finished recording, he wasn’t quite done with us. It was time for a question period.

An audience member asked Ghomeshi if he was jealous of Michael Bublé, the host of the televised Juno Awards Gala. Ghomeshi, on the other hand, was stuck with the duty of MCing the untelevised awards.

“He’s the Marcia to my Jan Brady … except I’m a brown Jan Brady,” Ghomeshi said. “Because he gets everything.”

Near the end of the two-hour live show, a woman made her way up to the very edge of the stage and stood there, with her arms outstretched to Jian.

“Oh,” he said, as though it was perfectly natural, and knelt to give her a hug.

As a producer escorted her away from the stage, Jian turned back to the audience.

“That’s the spirit of Saskatchewan, right there,” he said, grinning.

Image: The Exchange

Image: Dessa Bayrock / The Cascade

Day one: So I’m in Regina. Now what?

I arrived too late to pick up my press badge, but I managed to snag one of the last tickets to the nearly-sold-out taping of Jian Ghomeshi’s Q at the Conexus Arts Centre.

Jian Ghomeshi—aside from being wickedly handsome and wildly charismatic—is a Canadian ‘90s pop darling. He was a member of the satirical and sometimes a cappella band Moxy Früvous, probably best known for their song “King of Spain,” and these days he is the host of CBC Radio’s Q, a show focused around long-form interviews of artists, filmmakers, musicians and politicians.

He ran through the plan for the evening as though we were all sitting at his kitchen table and had just arrived for a night of board games.

The show would start recording at 7:06 p.m. and run as though it were playing live for two hours. It wouldn’t be edited after we finished (so whatever happened, hap-

Day two: The loneliness kicks in Friday marked my first full day in Regina, and I started getting a little bit restless and a little bit lonely.

The worst of it came with my foray into JUNOfest – a presentation of over 100 different bands spread out between a dozen venues over the course of two nights. I picked a show at The Lazy Owl, the student pub at the University of Regina, which starred Indigo Joseph (a local prairie band), Hannah Georgas (a BC-native) and Yukon Blonde (a BC band whose rock and fashion sense summed up the best parts of the ‘90s).

There is probably no better place to feel lonely than a noisy and bustling bar.

I sat at a two-person table in the upper portion of the bar, nursing a beer and steeling myself to try and talk to someone.

Then it happened; I saw a girl heading my way. She was smiling.

This is it! I thought. I’m going to make a friend!

“Are you using this chair?” she said.

I watched as she hauled it over to another table, my spirits falling.

This is possibly the loneliest I’ve ever been, I speculated desolately.

Then the bartender put a giant garbage

can where the other chair used to be.

Oh, no, I thought. Now that my date is literally garbage, I suppose this is the loneliest I’ve ever been.

It was a good thing the bands were so spectacular. Music and alcohol are pretty awesome that way; the beer kicked in and I shook myself out of the funk, and that was the end of my lonely saga. The days were too jam-packed after that to get too introspective.

Image: CARAS/iPhoto

Day three: The untelevised awards Apparently, there are two nights of awards – an untelevised half, during which the majority of awards are given away, and the better-known televised half, starring performances from all the big names.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

ARTS & LIFE FEATURE

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ve days. One press pass.

Image: CARAS/iPhoto

Image: Dessa Bayrock / The Cascade

Image: CARAS/iPhoto

The lesser-loved and rarely-spoken-of untelevised awards, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, saw a whopping 35 out of 44 awards given away.

Larry Leblanc, a prominent Canadian music journalist who was honoured with the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award at last night’s ceremonies, spoke out against how the Junos have evolved towards the televised/untelevised dichotomy.

“Do we really need to see Billy Talent one more time?” he said, speaking to a room full of media after receiving his trophy.

The Junos started evolving into stark contrast of the two events with CTV’s involvement, Leblanc said, which has pushed many awards to the edges to make room for the bigger and more popular acts, like Marianas Trench and Carly Rae Jepsen.

“The Junos does not represent CTV. It does not represent rock music,” Leblanc said. “When was the last time a classical artist played at the Junos?”

At least a couple of the big awards were given away during the first gala – for instance, Carly Rae Jepsen received Pop Album of the Year, and Adam Cohen accepted Artist of the Year on behalf of his father Leonard Cohen.

And there were some wonderful moments witnessed only by those gathered in the auditorium, and missed by the rest of Canada.

Take, for instance, Pugs and Crows’ acceptance speech of Instrumental Album of the Year – during which the five-person band joined their voices together for an a ca-

pella ditty.

“It’s the last 30 seconds of the last song on the album,” the band said afterwards, “but I guess nobody caught that, so we weren’t disqualified.”

One of the most touching moments of the evening was when David Gold’s mother accepted a Juno for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year on his behalf. The Woods of Ypres member passed away suddenly last Christmas.

“David always said, ‘Love the living,’” Esther Gold said, holding the trophy. “So do that – do that for David. Love the living.”

She asked the audience to “throw the horns” to honour his memory, a hand gesture meant to resemble devil horns popular in metal culture. The auditorium solemnly did so, repeating David’s name three times.

This first awards gala was a celebration of Canadian culture in so many ways – which makes it that much sadder that so few Canadians get to enjoy it, let alone know that it happens at all.

Day four: The climax of the televised gala I don’t think Regina was built to hold such a sheer crush of people.

About halfway through the show, we were informed that just under 8000 tickets were sold to the televised Juno gala – the largest event that has ever been held in Regina’s Brandt Centre.

Trying to get into the building was like being in a Discovery Channel documentary on migration patterns. Women teetered by

in bright satin and stilettos like exotic birds, showing an insane amount of skin for the below-zero temperatures. Tuxedos, suits and cashmere scarves crowded together in the cold, inching closer to the doors step by step.

To be frank, having a media pass to the Junos is not a glamorous experience. We were seated in a designated area, where we had WiFi, power outlets and a live stream of what was happening on stage but no access to the arena itself. Tables upon tables of media representatives from across the country sat quietly together, cordoned off in their own little worlds of work and individual deadlines.

There was a hot, almost cauterizing smell to the room, and it eventually dawned on me that it was the rows and rows of television lights, waiting patiently to illuminate celebrity faces as they were led back to speak to the press.

Winners and performers were kindly herded our way for a Q&A press conference after finishing their duties onstage. Anyone could ask a question.

We knew in advance who to expect; PR personnel handed out lists of who would win what before the show even started. It’s amazing what information people will give you in exchange for a promise not to tweet about it.

So we knew Carly Rae would score a Juno hat trick, and we knew that Adam Cohen would accept Songwriter of the Year on behalf of his father. They were excited, speechless and proud on stage, but the novelty had already worn off on us.

It was a lot like attending a scholarship dinner when you know you won’t be winning anything.

That being said, we had the chance to ask music celebs anything we wanted.

“If you could win any award other than the Junos,” one blogger asked Michael Bublé, “what would it be?”

“Best body,” Bublé replied with a beautiful smile. “Truly.”

Day five: Getting back on a plane The fifth and final day of my Juno trip was one of waiting around. I had four or five hours to burn between checking out of the hotel and catching the plane home, so largely I sat at a coffee shop and thought about what I did.

You know what I will never miss about Regina? Wind chill.

A couple of cab drivers assumed I was a singer when I told them I was in town for the Junos. In hindsight I should have made up a band name.

Even though I was warned beforehand, I learned the hard way that Saskatchewan air is exceedingly dry. I went through so much moisturizer that I’ve lost count of the tiny complimentary hotel bottles I’ve drained.

Surprisingly, the skin is cracking worst on my ankles. I guess the wind is getting in between my shoes and pant cuffs. Also my nasal passages are drier than the Sahara. Is it possible to get dandruff in your nose? I think I might have that.

You just don’t have to worry about these kinds of problems on the West Coast.

While in Regina, I had a chance to talk to at least a couple of musicians—Tom Barlow, the Matinee, the Great Lake Swimmers— and there’s a lot of transcribing to do. You’ll see the fruits of that labour in the rest of our summer issues, hopefully, under the Q&A column.

Thanks for everything, Junos. Next year the shindig is going down in Winnipeg, and this time next year we’ll see if any of us are willing to do the whole thing over again. It was a great experience, but also the worst possible timing – I wrote an exam 10 hours before I got on a plane for prairies, and I wrote another one 10 hours after landing back in BC. But there are a couple of things I learned from this experience: first, that if you apply for a press pass on a whim you might just end up flying to Saskatchewan. Second, al-

ways go to the after party – because sometimes Fred Penner is there and if you miss him you will never forgive yourself.

Image: CARAS/iPhoto

Missing the moment with Carly Rae Jepsen I saw Carly Rae Jepsen.

I’m not talking about at the Juno gala, where she graciously accepted Pop Album of the Year – although one of the cutest moments of the untelevised awards show was her thank you, where she pointed to her father in the audience and referred to him as her “hot date.”

It was later, after the gala was over and the crowds of media, artists and audience dispersed. I snagged a cab and made my way back to the hotel, oddly exhausted from three hours of sitting in a single place.

As the cabby pulled into the drive of the hotel, I saw a familiar figure standing under the awning, facing away from me.

Carly Rae. I pulled my wallet out to pay the cabby as fast as I could, praying she wouldn’t escape down some side alley before I could catch up with her. I was already imagining the conversation. “Hi,” I’d say. “Congratulations! You just won one of the most-coveted Junos of the weekend! You’re from Mission, I’m from Chilliwack – can we talk for a minute?”

But as I handed the driver my cab fare, I noticed she had a cell phone pressed to her face, the fingers of her hand blocking the other ear. Her shoulders were scrunched up, like she was warding off a wind. I think I saw the flash of a smile.

I was steeling myself to walk up to her, to pull out my recorder and ask her what it felt like to be the golden girl of the valley, the local kid who made good.

But then I started thinking about who she might be talking to. It was probably the first spare minute she had away from the crowds of fans and reporters who clamoured for her attention.

I imagined her calling her mom to say she’d won a Juno, or maybe her best friend back in BC. Her dad and a youngish guy—little brother, maybe—waited for her at the door to the hotel restaurant, her father smiling and gesturing inside with a touch of loving exasperation.

She skipped towards the open door, hung up and disappeared inside.

I’d missed my moment – but then again, it was never really my moment.

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ARTS & LIFE

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by AMY VAN VEEN

1. For some reason, the slinky-like shape of this often seasoned treat makes it

better than the regular variety. (5, 5 letters) 3. _____ salad has no lettuce, no pasta, is unhealthy and delicious. (6 letters) 6. This fruit mascarades as a berry, but in truth is just a fruit that looks best on

top of a sundae. (6 letters) 7. Even though no one is quite sure what is stuffed inside the synthetic casing,

we still gobble them up around campfires and barbecues. (3, 3 letters) 8. Black seeds, green rind and deliciousness in between. (10 letters) 10. Cheese, turkey, bacon, ham. This food has endless prefixes and is best served

with tomato and lettuce. (6 letters) 11. Despite the fact that it is technically a weed, parents force their children into

ditches to root through the thorns and find these. (12 letters)

DOWN

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Treats of the summer

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

1. Chilliwack roads are littered with shacks selling this vegetable. (4, 2, 3, 3) 2. This brand name made it okay for us to spew out of our food in public.

(5 letters) 3. You’ll know it’s time for this summertime treat when you hear the magical

tune and, for some reason, are willing to shell out for the severely

marked up price. (8 letters) 4. People pull out skewers and light their barbecues for this Turkish delight.

(5, 5 letters) 5. Children learn their entrepreneurial skills selling this beverage. (8 letters) 9. This dessert can really only be properly made at a campfire in the summer.

(6 letters)

LAST WEEK’S Answer Key Across 4. INSANITY 8. STRING 10. THEGREATMOLERAT 11. SMELLS 12. EATING 13. NAMES Down 1. SYMMETRY 2. CHINS 3. DRYNESS 4. INFINITY 5. LONGWORDS 6. EVERYTHING 7. HOUSES 9. METEORS

EclipseCrossword.com

The Weekly Horoscope Star Signs from Swamp Bob Aquarius: Jan 20 - Feb 18

Gemini: May 21 - June 21

Libra: Sept 23 - Oct 22

Truly get into the spirit of spring by starting a bunny relaxation spa. You can decide if this will be a spa for people to relax while petting bunnies or a spa for the relaxation of bunnies.

Spring is a time for new beginnings and experiences. Take up a new hobby of bunny juggling and see if you can break the world record.

You will find a bunny in your tea pot.

Offer it a slice of carrot cake to coax it out before sending it on its way.

Pisces: Feb 19 - March 20

Cancer: June 22 - July 22

Scorpio: Oct 23 - Nov 21

The rabbit took your horoscope.

You will stumble upon the nefarious plans of the Count Duke of bunnies, Lord Byron Loppingtin III who is bent on world domination. You must warn all before it is too late.

They are coming ...

Aries: March 21 - April 19

Leo: July 23 - Aug 22

Sagittarius: Nov 22 - Dec 21

Fashion magazines always say fur will never go out of fashion. Do them one better and start the trend of live bunny broaches for this spring’s must have accessory.

The sun is out, the sky is blue and somehow your mood seems to be set to simmer on the derelict side of depression. Elevate such feelings by sitting in a meadow quietly contemplating the wonders of life while building a bunny pyramid.

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

Virgo: Aug 23 - Sept 22

Capricorn: Dec 22 - Jan 19

While enjoying the sun in the park you will be mugged by a gang of leather jacketwearing rabbits who call themselves The Lucky Rabbit Foot.

You will save a young rabbit’s life only to find that it is from the royal family of the rabbit kingdom. You will be whisked away in a carriage drawn by snow white hares to a forgotten kingdom to rule over the bunnies from the land of rabbit.

You may wish to forgo your lucky rabbits foot for any exams this summer as a notorious rabbit gang is on the loose victimizing anyone they come across with such things. Four leaf clovers are still acceptable although they may simply try to eat them.

You will accidentally hit a bunny while out for a drive. This soul-crushing moment will only be made worse when you are haunted by the ghost of the dearly departed creature. To avoid negative energies put up a shrine and make an offering of fresh carrots.

We’re hiring for ONLINE EDITOR. Find more information at ufvcascade.ca/employment or email Michael@ufvcascade.ca

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ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

“The Cost of Ivory” Blood money and gruesome realities GRIFFY VIGNERON

THE CASCADE

Anyone who walked into C building last week may have been met by a particularly bloody representation of greed-fuelled human brutality. “The Cost of Ivory,” a new media art piece designed by art student Julie Ruffel, is centred around a 60-pound paper mache elephan, its face completely sliced off.

Alongside the slaughtered elephant, a smaller baby elephant looks on in a heart-wrenching fashion. Alone and vulnerable, it is depicted clinging to the side of its fallen mother. Virtual blood that oozes from the fallen elephant’s face in the video is spread out over the floor, slapping viewers in the face with the horrors of the wealth driven ivory trade.

“The big point of the piece is the fact that the elephant’s face is cut off,” Ruffel explained. “Twenty-five per cent of an elephants ivory is under the skin, which is why [it’s done].”

Ruffel, an avid animal rights supporter, had found images online of defaced elephants slaughtered for their ivory. She described finding them particu-

Image: Blake McGuire/The Cascade

“The Cost of Ivory,” Julie Ruffel’s paper mache sculpture shows the horrendous truth of the ivory trade. larly gruesome and felt the need to bring attention to the issue.

With her piece Ruffel said she “wanted to do something that physically put, literally, the elephant in the room with [the viewer].” Using old copies of The Cascade was not just a good idea because it was cheap and it was recycling, but because it allowed Ruffel to make something big and bold. Unlike a picture or video, a paper mache model put a real presence in the room. Ruffel

wanted to make the experience as real as she could.

But her point was not to simply turn us away from the plight of the elephant aghast. Rather, she hopes to instill awareness.

“Elephant ivory poaching has gone through the roof lately. We have 12,000 African elephants that are being poached a year because of the growing market in China,” Ruffel explained. And the real kicker she said, is that “no one’s really doing anything

[about it].”

“In China ivory is a source of status,” Ruffel noted. Wearing ivory shows others that you’ve got money. In our society it could be akin to wearing Gucci or Prada, or toting Louis Vuitton handbags.

“The problem is that there are legal markets in China that allow for ivory [sales]. Once you have a legal market people launder products illegally through it,” Ruffel described. A certain portion of ivory comes from other animals, or from treasure hunters who dig up the tusks of long dead woolly mammoths. These methods of gaining are ivory are considered legal; however, no average person is going to know the difference between legal ivory and elephant ivory.

And while Ruffel’s artwork speaks most directly of the fate of the elephant, she emphasized that her piece is not solely about elephants alone.

“An elephant is a huge animal, it has a huge impact on its ecosystem. If they’re gone, we don’t know what kind of damage that’s going to do,” Ruffel emphasized.

Humans, and even the landscape

itself, could experience drastic changes.

On top of which, Ruffel added, “Poaching animals has become a $20 billion per year industry for organized crime. There is more illegal animal wildlife poaching than there is illegal gun trade. It is second only to the drug trade, that’s how bad it’s gotten. It’s not just a couple of local hunters.”

The poaching industry that goes along with elephant slaughter often affects locals. Ruffel attributed a small fraction of elephant poaching to starving Africans. She explained that many locals are employed as rangers, and many of these rangers are killed every year protecting the animals from poaching.

“If people don’t care about the elephants, they should at least care about the people. There is a human impact absolutely,” Ruffel stated.

Her elephants unabashedly bring to life the realities of the cost of the ivory trade – on elephants and, indirectly, the human kind as well.

Discussions Below the Belt Learning to love your anatomy JOHNNY RODDICK

SeXPERT

May is national masturbation month.

It’s both a celebration and an awareness campaign that began in 1995 after the U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was forced to resign from her position after she suggested masturbation was a natural part of human sexuality, and was something that could be taught as a means of practicing safe sexual behaviour.

It’s a great cause, and one that most of us, um, participate in without needing any political incentive (unless you’re into that). However, for many people, masturbation doesn’t come easy; it can be a source of shame or an exercise in futility. Though the causes for this

are many, it usually comes from a learned disconnection between body and mind – and often the belief that one’s genitals are gross or unacceptable. This can be due to early-childhood scolding, abuse or the development of unrealistic ideals through media and porn.

There is good reason to make the effort, though. The benefits of masturbation range from relief of menstrual cramps and headaches to self-discovery and self-control of one’s sex drive and bodily functions. Whether you do it quick and hard under the covers as a sleep aid or linger on the precipice of a building orgasm for hours at a time, masturbation empowers you, arms you with the knowledge of what you like and how you work, and most of all, it lets you know that when you want it,

you can have it. That’s not selfish or desperate; that’s not perverted or silly; that’s freeing. That’s true self-control.

The good news for those who feel shame about masturbating, or about their genitals, is that no matter how entrenched the puritanical beliefs or insecurities are, there are those of us with similar stories who’ve found our way out. There’s no one size fits all approach, but one important step for many people is learning to see their sex organs as something normal, valuable and even beautiful.

This might seem like a stretch for some people, but the more respect and comfort you have for your pleasurable parts, the more likely you are to engage with them in healthy and satisfying ways.

Developing a love for your bits

can be done numerous ways, and it’s something that each person needs to explore on their own.

Learning more about them is one way to do it. For example, did you know that the visible “button” of the clitoris is only the tip of the iceberg? The visible portion, the glans clitoris, is much like the head of the penis, and as such it has a clitoral shaft that extends upwards into the body, before bending and splitting downwards along either side of the inner vulva, wrapping around the vaginal opening. There is also beauty in the fingerprintlevel of diversity between genitalia – they all follow the same patterns, include the same structures, but each person looks completely different from everyone else. Knowing this can allow you to realize that there’s no one good way for

your genitals to look.

Every single person could stand to develop a more healthy relationship with their genitals. However, for this to happen, we need to work together to remove the stigma and the shame surrounding masturbation and around genitalia. Some women have taken this cause on with the creation of vulva-shaped jewelry – often with artistic similarities to flowers or butterflies.

Whatever way we do it, we need to push our culture to let go of its harmful, stifling beliefs. It’s not wrong. It’s not weird. Quite the opposite, it’s the key to a positive body image and a healthy sex life.

So celebrate the month and get in touch with yourself.

Absolute Style fashion show leaves unforgettable impression GRIFFY VIGNERON

THE CASCADE

Exotic Russian chic, ‘20s gangster and modern minimalism – just a few of the many looks that graced the runway at this year’s annual UFV fashion show. Diversity was the name of the game for this year’s graduating fashion students. Yet, even with all the differences each and every design was pulled off with effortless finesse by the models.

The event, one of the biggest at the university, took place on April 25, and showcased 100 original outfits. Collections of sporty bustiers, first-year dresses and dramatic wearable art lead up to the big finale – the graduate collections.

Given only a semester, the

graduate collections were a culmination of long hours of designing, drafting, pattern making and sewing over a period of only one semester. Each grad student was required to design three cohesive garments for the show, while taking classes and completing a portfolio. Most students were at the school five days a week, seven hours a day. Of a class of about 25 students, only 11 remained.

But the result of the long hours of hard work on stage was simply stunning.

And the treat wasn’t just to be had by the audience. The students, relieved to finally be finished, had the satisfaction of seeing their hard work come to something.

Overwhelmed after the event, Marlie Raines, one of the graduate students, said, “It hasn’t hit me

yet. Even after my collection [was on display], and we [all] walked out, we’re like, it’s over?”

Other students, like Bitty Berlinghoff, were ecstatic and relieved to have finally completed their program.

Berlinghoff was a recipient of the Most Marketable Award, one of four awards given out to the graduating students for excellent work. For her line, she mixed hip street wear with traditional Thai fabrics. While her program is complete, it’s definitely only a beginning for her.

Eagerly she told me, “I have an interview at Arc’teryx on Monday.

Two of the members of the colour department were in the front row looking at me, I swear!” In the same evening, she was also approached by woman who wanted

Berlinghoff to be her intern.

Ning Hao was another extremely talented award recipient.

Modern, sleek and stylish, Hao’s line used tie-dyed blue-green fabrics and striking shapes. Not only did she win the textile award, but she was also announced as one of 25 finalists to compete in Télio Canada’s Breakthrough Designer competition. The competition takes place during Montréal Fashion week, and the trip there is allexpenses paid.

Other showcases of talent were Carly Engelbrecht and Minyi Li. Engelbrecht, the winner of the Most Technical award, designed dresses that captured the artistic essence of the wearer. Each piece was draped so precisely, it clung to the curves of each model and flowed beautifully.

Most Creative Award went to Minyi Li. Half Jackets, and even half pants looked marvellously classy in her midnight blue fabrics. The models, with their dark feathered eye makeup, looked like they walked right out of Black Swan.

And it wasn’t only the awarded designs that burned beautiful fiery afterimages into viewer’s artistic eyes. The entire show was a showcase of upcoming talent.

Glimpses of brilliance that danced on to the runway, and just as quickly were whisked away.

Look out for the full Absolute Style Fashion Show coverage in our next issue on May 22!

14

ARTS & LIFE

Book Review

Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Dine & Dash

Crossroads Family Restaurant Address: 1821 Sumas Way, Abbotsford Phone:(604) 852-1614 Hours: Monday to Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Meals from $8 to $20

DESSA BAYROCK

THE CASCADE

JEREMY HANNAFORD

CONTRIBUTOR

Darth Vader is an iconic character of science fiction. His brooding hatred is a trademark but has always been interpreted differently amongst many authors. Some portray him as a dark emotionless tool of death to be used at the Emperor’s bidding. Others have shown him as a conniving child hidden underneath a shroud of pain and anger. Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison portrays the Dark Lord in both lights in this contemplation of five issues from Dark Horse Comics.

Writer Haden Blackman has much experience with Vader as he wrote the popular video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Giving Vader a secret apprentice in the game was quite an initial mark on the Star Wars universe and he has continued to weave tales for the character in graphic novels.

His first novel, Darth Vader and the Lost Command was a well-written but all too short story about the character. Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison proves to be more wellpaced but doesn’t focus on the title character as much as one would think. Instead the narrative follows young Imperial Cadet Laurita Tohm. Having suffered disfiguration early in his life, Tohm’s character is, in a sense, a younger incarnation of Darth Vader. His youthful innocence hides his deep seeded rage and undying loyalty to the Empire.

Blackman’s second novel changes from an inner focus of Lord Vader to an external observation from Cadet Tohm. Vader’s lack of hesitation and emotion mystifies Cadet Tohm as the two work together to save the Emperor after he suffers a rebel attack from within the Empire itself. They travel to an ancient prison that once operated by the Jedi as their own version of Guantanamo Bay in search of assistance against the rebel attacks.

The Ghost Prison represents the guilt the Jedi hid from the galaxy as it holds every prisoner of war that was captured during the Clone Wars. Had this been introduced in

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; the accusations against the Jedi would have been more grounded and the innocent demeanor they bestowed would have been cracked. Blackman teases the reader by having Tohm discover holograms of the young Anakin Skywalker. To see Vader viewing his previous self is an interesting treat as the once stern Darth Lord displays almost childlike emotional hate towards his former self.

Agustin Alessio takes on the role of artist this time round and provides some stunning artwork.

Clean lines and deep rich colors add to the story and help define the characters and their environments. When Rick Leonardi wrote and illustrated The Lost Command, he gave the characters a more cartoonist feel with odd round edges and a simple color scheme. Alessio provides a more realistic art style that helps build the dark atmosphere throughout the novel.

Taking on the job of penciller and colourist is no easy task in comics, yet Alessio stands to the challenge.

He delivers some shocking images throughout the story and adds a sense of evil to the pages. Barely holding anything back, Agustin shows the brutality of war in the Star Wars universe and the severity of loyalty and death. His art really brings out the “Dark Side” of the story.

Rarely can you write a story about a villain and make the reader truly side with them. Blackman makes one invest in Vader and Cadet Tohm and makes them cheer for the bad guys. In reality, Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison is about misguided inspirational figures.

It once again is a short story (being only five issues) but it is much more well-paced compared to The Lost Command. I was able to get a reduced price by pre-ordering on Amazon which made it worth the price. However now with a face price of $27.50, it has become a bit pricey for a graphic novel one can finish in a dedicated few hours. I would recommend this for any fans of Star Wars and comics but make sure you purchase it online to save a few dollars.

When it comes to restaurants, one phrase is guaranteed to win me over in a heartbeat.

All-day breakfast.

Walking into Crossroads Family Restaurant is like returning to childhood – the well-kept wood and vinyl booths give the impression that they haven’t changed for years, if not decades, and the result is both vintage and comforting.

I entered the restaurant at 4 p.m. with one goal on my mind: eggs Benedict. It’s the best way to judge a breakfast restaurant. It’s hard to do anything really wrong with the simple ingredients, but the best chefs combine the elements in ways that make it immediately apparent if you are dealing with a pro or an amateur.

The waitress promptly brought us coffee and water (always a good sign) and was patient when we took our sweet time deciding what to eat (also a good sign). I decided on the seafood eggs Benedict, and my meal companions ordered a classic burger and turkey sandwich, respectively. All three meals sounded delicious. Our excitement was nearly palpable This is where things started going very slightly downhill.

Image: Anthony Biondi / The Cascade

Delicious food, questionable service.

Our friendly and patient waitress didn’t write our order down, which resulted in some meal mixups. The burger came topped with bacon and cheese, an option that was declined during ordering, and my seafood benny appeared instead as a seafood omelet.

I hate omelets—something about the pseudo-scrambling of the eggs—and while it looked like a very nice omelet, I sent it back in favour of waiting for the eggs benny. Ruffled feathers were quickly smoothed; she apologized profusely, and also told us we wouldn’t be charged for the cheese and bacon.

Luckily, while waiting for my own meal to appear I had ample time to study the other meals delivered to our table.

Let me be clear on this point: I could write poetry about this food.

The potato salad served with the burger was cold, creamy, tangy and perfect – the kind of homemade potato salad you ate at picnics as a child and haven’t been able to find since. Minute shreds of carrot provided the perfect veggie-

undertone, and just enough pickle flavour was present to spice it up without overpowering it.

The bacon on the burger, unlike a lot of restaurant bacon, was obviously fresh and cooked-to-order. It looked like the stuff you’d cook in your own kitchen – crispy, greasyin-a-good-way, deliciously and dangerously hot.

The fries were also fresh and hot, barely salted and gorgeously golden-brown. Even when they cooled, they remained delicious and crispy – the true test of good fries.

When my meal finally came, it was well worth the wait. I would have waited a century for this breakfast. Instead of the classic ham or bacon found in eggs benny, the Benedict featured a miniature mountain of shredded crab and shrimp under the poached egg. I was worried that it would be overly fishy, but the flavours of egg, English muffin, seafood and hollandaise sauce melded perfectly. I don’t have the ability to properly describe the first moment of tasting this concoction; the closest I can get to say it was like eating sunlight. The hash browns were crispy without being tough, with the same enduring deliciousness as the French fries.

I could write an epic poem or a musical about this meal. I could eat at this restaurant for the rest of my life. All I can say is go to this place and eat this food – and make sure the waitress gets your meal right the first time.

Haute Stuff

Trends that scare me AMY VAN VEEN

The cascade

Trends are those tricky styles that come in one season and go out the next. Sometimes they linger for a little longer, but nowadays they seem to be everything from my childhood coming back to haunt me. And while there are some of those bad childhood memories that look different in a new light—like my rekindled love of leggings—there are other trends that I can’t quite face with the same willing gusto of a free fashion spirit.

The first one is the high-low dress. What is the high-low dress?

Why does it sound so paradoxical and contradictory? The high-low dress is the mullet of the dress world. It’s short in the front and long in the back, which may theoretically be a great way to enter a Gatsby-esque ballroom as you cascade down the stairs and the low hemline floats behind you, but it still looks like a mullet dress.

This judgment is not something I cast on others who wear the dress. This judgment comes from me giving the trend a try in the Winners fitting room. There were beautiful dresses with birds and stripes and flowers, and I wanted in on the springtime feelings, but when I put it on, all I could think was how weird my legs looked.

From behind I look like a fool who doesn’t understand how

to buy a maxi-dress that’s long enough and from the front I look like someone who got stuck in an escalator and had to be cut out.

The second trend I balk at is the block heel. It’s a fairly selfexplanatory shoe, for those who may not right away understand what the block heel is. It’s a midto high-heel shoe and instead of a pointy stiletto or a demure kitten heel, it’s a block. Imagine a block, and put it under the heel of a shoe, and there you have it – the block heel. I actually owned a couple pairs of block heels when I was younger. They were handme-downs from my older sister, which worked just fine because to me, the trend held over from mid ‘90s into the turn of the millennium long enough for me to wear strappy block heels with, coincidentally, a high-low dress to my eighth-grade graduation. It may sound classy, but when paired with the adolescent awkwardness and a wannabe pixie cut, it was more so a memory I’d like to forget.

Finally, the overalls. The onepiece-outfit that’s perfect for when you want to grab a drink with your gal pals and splash on a coat of paint in one fell swoop.

Celebrities are starting to parade around in them like they’re the greatest thing since the little black dress, but we have to be brutally honest about this trend. From the front, I bet quite a few ladies could pull this look off. With the

right jut of the hip and the right angle of the arms, this look could be quite cute in an urban farm girl way, but as soon as you turn around – things get real. Small butts look even flatter, big butts look even larger and no one is willing to say how much overalls actually make our butts look like an ideal audition for the SNL “Mom Jeans” commercial.

I owned overalls. I remember when the baggy look was cool.

Everyone wanted to be as fresh as the Fresh Prince. But please, let’s not put ourselves through the shame again.

The thing about trends is when they first come out, I scoff and cast judging stares, but when they stick around for a little longer, I suddenly begin to warm up to the idea. I see girls around me pulling off the trend and I think I could get in on the up-to-theminute action. Maybe the highlow dress isn’t that bad. I mean sure it looks a little like a mullet, but a floral mullet could be cute.

And maybe I was a little too hard on the block heel – I mean they’re sturdy, which is always a good thing. And perhaps I shouldn’t disregard the overalls. They may have made Liz Lemon look like a lesbian Mario brother, but that doesn’t mean the same will happen to me.

Except it will. And I’ll regret it.

Because some trends only last one season for a reason.

15

ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Film Reviews

To the Wonder

be if an existence like in the Tree of Life’s could possibly last here. But this is not simply nostalgia: in Malick both the personal and general questions constantly issuing hold spiritual purpose.

Christianity informs Malick’s films, but there is more than a direct message-to-verse reading at work here. While deprivation of joy correlates with depiction of mundane suburban neighbourhood grocery store gas station living (the same grandiose camera and score, but turned from the skies to pavement), what gains more focus in To the Wonder is the uncomplimentary interpersonal relationship that undergirds everything. As understood from the teachings of the church (represented in the film by Javier Bardem’s character of a priest), this has its roots in disparity of belief. Affleck in voiceover recognizes and fears rifts that would be caused

by knowledge of his weakness of faith, and dissolution between him and Kurylenko can be seen to come from that. Her attempts at spontaneous response, laughter and freedom of movement are met with immobile stances returning to the mean of domesticity, in contrast to the romantic poetry of the film’s Paris-set opening. For as in all Malick’s multi-voiced works, these are freely given voices, not an endorsement of each, and the confirmation of religion’s labels (Bardem, as well, is in a constant state of doubt) is only a result that comes from the underlying tension and causes Malick enters into.

Some of the To the Wonder’s more interesting irresolvable qualities, but also its simplest, weakest moments, come from this critical approach to Affleck’s performance.

It is not blank, because it portrays a recognizably reticent and controlled kind of male role, reaching near-metaphorical imagery in favoured stances of hands-on-hips and a deliberate long gait, oppositional to his balletic claimedbeloved. Divided by language (he replies in English to her French) and defined by repetition rather than variation, he is numbness surrounded by impermanence, and yet conscious of this, though not enough to lead to visible difference – Malick’s concept of love is inexplicable and unchanging.

Located in one of the movie’s more obvious parallels—the work of the two main male figures, conflicted and partially rejected—is a question like one posed in The Thin Red Line: “Do we benefit [our surroundings]?”

Those surroundings are pitched at a lower level than The Tree of Life’s – there is no strong suggestion of an afterlife, and even the

scene of a prayer shows only those immediately around. Though Malick always contains a spiritual throughline, To the Wonder makes central that how he arrives there is purely material: Malick’s two most defining aesthetic marks most closely resemble partially eavesdropped conversations passed by and a restless eye searching for beauty, neither the mark of the eternal or expansive. A piece in New York Magazine by Bilge Ebiri catalogued Malick’s methods for providing character inspiration to the cast of To the Wonder, many coming from classic Russian literature. The actual film is set in modern Oklahoma, and has at least a passing interest in the way of life specific to the area. These dissonances partly comprise To the Wonder’s compilation: shots, feelings, the seemingly contradictory forces of secular affair and spiritual romance, literary classic and present day, the search for beyond interior and what is a story easily found.

Perhaps Malick has only complicated and beatified a universal and relatively conventional narrative, one arguably already better done by filmmakers both past and present (Eric Rohmer and James Gray, to name two). But Malick’s films have the distinction of how they grow and fade over time, forgotten shots becoming significantly different from first impression, dialogue changing from esoteric to immediately understood. This does not excuse some of the misjudgments present, but in this attempting, To the Wonder is a film attuned to the process of romantic thought, which can work by turns ridiculous and religious.

of bringing the character to life, the huge step in budget and production seemed to prove too much for him as was evident in the constant errors and gouging plot issues that

were present in Iron Man 2. Shane Black takes the increased production value with a clearer focus and more well-rounded narrative. The fourth wall banter Robert Downey Jr. delivers at the front of the film is reminiscent of the pair’s work on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Black is able to combine the classic humour of the series and add a level of maturity not yet seen. The switch between the two is rapid but subtle and never creates an awkward or unnecessary moment.

Following a story arc eerily similar to that of The Dark Knight Rises, Iron Man 3 is much more about Tony Stark than about Iron Man. For a comic book film, the amount of action out of suit proves odd at first but it continues to ponder the question Black is asking. Not all of the film is clean cut, though. While the narrative and climax were handled much better, the film’s villain is at a loss for motive and identity almost throughout the movie.

Their reason for all the terror and chaos they have caused is murky at best. Hints at actions by Stark in his past may provide a partial motive but the lengths in which they are carried out seem a tad extreme. Another head scratching incident appears halfway through the film, which will garner a mixed

reactions from movie and comic fans alike. Some will be confused and puzzled while others will feel betrayed. The incident carried out is amusing at first, but afterwards seems unorthodox and just wrong.

It doesn’t ruin the film but it does put a dent in the armour.

A problem that plagued the last two Iron Man films was that the endings fell short, both in story and in entertainment value.

Iron Man 3 shines true and outperforms both the previous films combined. Besides lasting more than two minutes, Iron Man 3’s climatic end battle doesn’t hold back with creativity both from the writers and visual effects artists. The intensity is well shot and the humour doesn’t elude the action.

For a first directing attempt at a major motion picture, Shane Black handles the product well and helps create a unique story with Downey Jr. once again acing the character of Stark. Some may critique its poor choices during the second act, but I personally believe that it exceeds the second movie and while rarely does a origin story lose to its successors (excluding The Dark Knight) Iron Man 3 is an entertaining watch and gives an extra layer of depth that the series desperately needed.

MICHAEL SCOULAR

THE CASCADE

Terrence Malick’s movies, though all previously period pieces, have done anything but avoided present time. It’s there in the way his images of violence, the pastoral, wars, romance and home amid the universe are only possibly past – to put them in a current frame is to risk derision or the label of incommunicable. They exist within the danger of the slippage of time, yet attempt to reach that presence. Maybe the best example would be the dividing point of WWII in The Thin Red Line, where the human force within nature, the point of compassion, and the barriers of communication: phones, language, letters and openness to the natural, graspable wonder that is right there, present, intertwined in elevated, polyphonic verse. What To the Wonder does is place this same reaching beyond—Malick’s questions and invocations of beauty—in the obviously present day, locked into the spaces his images typically seem to try to escape.

Malick’s sudden, late prolific pace means there is for the first time consistency within his work.

The marked differences between Badlands and Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, and even from there to The New World and then The Tree of Life is not the case here.

In editing rhythms, camera movement and occasional use of music, To the Wonder is akin to The Tree of Life to the point of predictability.

Magic hour unmatched cuts from a camera alive with spontaneity, capturing brief burnished glows before swiveling toward the movement of the wind, nature and balancing dancing bodies is in itself no longer as spontaneous as it

was at first sight. But this is part of what Malick is doing, and while it may not be entirely successful, what sets this apart from the rest of his work is how his images, in method full of beauty, in effect cannot change the unimpressive, undesirable conflict at the movie’s core: a cowardly, posturing archetype of masculinity (Ben Affleck) and an idealized, in-motion giver of beauty and light (Olga Kurylenko). This, too, resembles The Tree of Life, with some snatches calling back memories of that piece (a wide shot of assembled kickball, parental arguments heard filtered through floors and walls). But there is none of the fixed, restoration by recall of Malick’s last work.

To the Wonder is completely of the present, with cellphone video, Skype conversations and modern conventional architecture all markers of mediated, alienated living – one unvoiced question might

Iron Man 3 JEREMY HANNAFORD

contributor

The concept of Iron Man has always been questioned; both in film and in the comics. Is it really Tony Stark or is it just a man in a suit? Is Tony the hero or is it his armour?

That single question is the underlining focus of Iron Man 3 and while it isn’t given full attention, it is provided with an answer.

Iron Man 3 begins with Tony Stark mentioning a quote stating that “we create our own demons.”

For Tony, his demons are the consequences of his actions from the past and how they, in turn, drove certain characters to become the people who they are. Add the fact that he’s dealing with some posttraumatic stress disorder and you have the once bravado-filled Tony Stark with a chip on his shoulder.

He hides in his work by building new suit models and tries to mask his cracked demeanour. Unlike the self-destructing illness he faced in Iron Man 2, Tony’s weakness is that of his mind and something that actually holds strong throughout the film. Rather than being a silly asset of the plot, his disorder guides the character rather than controls him.

Some were upset when Jon Favreau, director of the last two films,

stepped out of the chair for Shane Black to take over, but I personally liked the change in direction.

Something about Favreau always seemed off. While he did a great job

16

ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Concert Review

The Zolas at the Vogue Theatre

CHARTS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Girl Dracula Garbage World Slates Vérité BOY Mutual Friends Gianna Lauren On Personhood

Maylee Todd Escapology

Digits Only Affection

METZ Dirty Shirt b/w Leave Me Out

8

B-17 Wishing Won’t Make It So

9 10

Bloodshot Bill So Blue The Dragstrip Devils The Dragstrip Devils

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Phoenix Bankrupt!

John Reischman Walk Along John Diamond Rings Free Dimensional Cellos Bomb Shelter Pissed Jeans Honeys All Out Panic Pig Hayden Us Alone Suuns Images Du Futur

Shuffle DESSA BAYROCK

civl dj-in-waiting

In case you weren’t quite sick of all this Juno-talk, here’s a PSA from our Juno-expert Dessa Bayrock. She flew all the way to Regina and all she got you was this lousy playlist. In the later summer months, you will hopefully catch her on some local airwaves hosting Afternoons at The Cascade, a Cascadethemed radio show for those who think print media is dead, dead, dead and refuse to pick up a newspaper.

Dragonette – “My Legs” Dragonette was nominated for Dance Recording of the Year for the second year in a row, although they lost the bling to Anjulie. This tune is the perfect pre-drinking song; damn catchy and an anthem to go out and do something.

The Matinee – “Young and Lazy” These BC boys are just allaround solid. It’s the kind of comfortable rock you could hear Tom Cochrane playing – with just enough of a grounding in indie roots rock to make it fresh. Think road trips. Think drinking beer in the summer.

Think if only you could actually play that bass guitar stashed in your closet and life was a music video. It would be this song.

Hannah Georgas – “Somebody” Georgas is a firecracker on stage, both vulnerable and vicious. Her voice is a lot like Ingrid Michaelson, but she takes a step further. You can tell she’s had her heart broken and is ready to take her revenge in a quiet, musically kickass kind of way.

Library Voices – “Generation Handclap” Despite the fact that this band declined my request for an interview, I still have a soft spot for their infectious tunes and clever lyrics. This song won me over with the line, “You be Coupland/ I’ll be Murakami.”

Because I am an English major and I love both of those authors. It’s like an inside joke, except I get it! I get it.

Image: Vancouver 125/Flickr

MELISSA SPADY CONTRIBUTORS When The Zola’s single “Knot in my Heart” first came out on the radio I immediately pegged them as a Vancouver-based band.

I heard a rain-soaked, soulful kind of thing in their music and a sound like that could only come from my backyard. When I was on my way downtown to the Vogue Theatre, it was with very high hopes. Ever since my first exposure I’ve been wondering in earnest what they’d be like on stage. Would they be rigged and intense? Or maybe enthusiastic with a dash of pepsquad?

I waited patiently for their April 19 show.

It ended up being a sold out show and my first at the Vogue.

I was delighted to find they removed the first two rows of obnoxiously-placed chairs to make room for a dance floor. Usually we’re expected to all cram into the 10 feet between the stage and the first row. This spring evening, however, there was breathing room.

“This is really overwhelming,” guitarist/vocalist Zachary Gray said after noticing the sold out crowd hanging on his every word.

I sang along to “Ancient Mars” and when the live show deviated from the studio version I heard the whole crowd was singing along with me. An anecdotal story about sifting through the stuff Prince

had left backstage from the previous evening led Gray off the stage to find us a box of Lucky Charms.

He opened the box and poured them over the audience, declaring that we were now covered in fairy dust. There was a sigh of adoration from the crowd in near unison.

Meanwhile you notice you’ve been acutely aware of pianist, Tom Dobrzanski, playing with a quiet intensity in the corner. You don’t always see him, but his presence enhances Gray’s performance in the same way that Gray’s voice complements his deliciously catchy tunes. The cherry on top was when Gray crawled out in to the crowd to play their final song, “Cold Moon,” a sorrow drenched little ditty with a keyboard There are aspects in their 2012 release, Ancient Mars, that give the album a distinctly concept feeling.

All of the tracks sound like they were written under a rainy Vancouver moon. The cool moisture in the air has been breathed right in to the lyrics. I hear the story of a profoundly broken heart and a 20-something-year-old guy attempting to fix all his problems by crooning into a microphone for 39 minutes. The space-age allusions tell me he’s thinking only of the future, and he’s hoping that it’ll be different than the past. His voice isn’t miserably lamenting the aches and pains of yesterdays; our hero has a soft romantic way

of letting the words bounce out of his mouth. His partner behind the keys adds his own funkiness that allows the pair to create an emotionally-charged picture without depressing the listener.

I’m never overwhelmed with the overall sound; in fact it leaves me feeling like I want a little more.

It touches just light enough for it to be intriguing, but it’s exquisitely vulnerable – like I’m overhearing a private confession. Their sound is enamouring, but it feels a little like breaking the rules; like when I unabashedly crushed on my high school geography teacher.

I will admit that I was already developing a music crush on The Zolas prior to their show a few weeks ago, but there is an intangible physical presence to their stage performance that I can’t seem to put my finger on. I listened to “Knot in My Heart” on repeat for weeks when it came out but the song indisputably held more weight live. I always have at least one complaint about every show I go to (which I do often), but I have nothing but praise for The Zolas.

If you’ve heard their music and like it, I urge you to not pass up the opportunity to see them live. It was intense, emotional and hauntingly beautiful. I left feeling like I had experienced something really special.

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ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

Mini Album Reviews

SoundBites

17

Mikal Cronin MCII

She & Him Volume 3

Second Family Second Family

Phoenix Bankrupt!

The spring months often contain releases that are summer-ready, reminding the listener that those winter dreams of lounging in the sun while sipping a beer are about to be realized. The past two springs have seen the release of Best Coast’s sun-soaked The Only Place and Noah Lennox’s chillwave-inspired Tomboy, and for me both records provided a soundtrack to those summers, with disjointed memories attached to each track. Mikal Cronin, a member of the Ty Segall Band, moved to California to record MCII, an album that I see fitting the bill of this spring’s introduction to summer record, not just because of its summery vibe, but because of Cronin’s out of sync mood throughout the record. Falling somewhere between a garage rock and pop record, Cronin focuses the theme’s of MCII on his apprehension moving forward in life, trying to remain hopeful while frequently haunted by his past. On “See It My Way,” Cronin laments, “I hear the song/ I wanna sing along with you/ But when I try I’m out of tune/ I turn and walk away.” A maturing artist with an ear for arrangements is always a treat to listen to, and Mikal Cronin demonstrates that he has truly emerged from Segall’s shadow with this release.

She & Him have always been a contemporary throwback kind of band, generally going to the ‘60s and ‘70s for inspiration. And nothing in that regard has changed here with the release of Volume 3. The band, composed of main vocalist Zooey Deschanel— who seems to be able to do no wrong in anything she does—and M. Ward, have somehow created something much more than a novelty act over the years. It’s actually been five years since their first LP was released and they continue to improve, notably in production quality with this newest album. Spanning 14 tracks, including three covers, Deschanel’s voice is very sweet as song types range from Motown sounds to the twang of country music’s golden age. What is most likely be the album’s biggest single is the second track to appear, “Never Wanted Your Love.” It’s a light popdriven ballad, light on the lyrics but strong on the sentiment. Following that is “Baby” and the first to feature a duet between Deschanel and Ward. A favourite, “I Could’ve Been Your Girl,” is rich and powered by Ward’s expressive guitar. Finally, “Sunday Girl” has to be mentioned simply because it’s a bilingual song, partly in French. It would be hard to say any song found here is forgettable, as each is simply unique and ignoring that would be a mistake. As a whole, this album at least stands on par with their previous work – if not above.

The album art for the self-titled debut EP from Vancouver’s Second Family sports a collage of ‘80s and ‘90s sitcom families. The Cosbys, the Tanners, the Connors. All accounted for. Okay, I get it. Television is like a second family, Second Family, you clever bastards.

Less clever is the music contained inside. Musically, the band draws on a bland, vaguely post-punk range of influences that could slot them in nicely alongside your standard, middle-ofthe-road Peak 102.7 faves. While the sonic palette isn’t particularly original, the musicianship is pretty stellar. That’s what’s so disappointing about this EP; it’s a group of seemingly-talented performers turning out half-baked work.

The production is right on the money, but the songwriting is middling, tepid, and downright boring. The EP’s most interesting track, “Summer Daze” starts out promising, with playful, palm-muted guitar interplay, but it never goes anywhere. The lead vocals would be a fairly serviceable baritone if it wasn’t for the incessant and irritating yelps punctuating nearly every line. If this is the best Second Family can offer, perhaps the band’s members would be better off finding other ways to wield their considerable talents.

“Almost anything/ almost everything” go two separate refrains from Phoenix’s “Bourgeois,” one of ten assured yet aggressive tracks on Bankrupt! that isn’t so much a statement of intent as a pleasurably recursive continuation of the album’s larger sound. Each anthem (and save the outro of “Chloroform” and the “Love Like a Sunset”recalling all buildup of the title track, that’s what each comes across as) plays into the same wanting of extremes: the safety of solipsism (“I’d rather be alone”), the perfection of coexistant eternity (“I wish I knew you from before/ ‘Til I die”), but together more a reflection of the anxiety of the two brought together (“and you can’t cross the line/ but you can’t stop trying” again and again on “S.O.S. In Bel Air”). Thomas Mars’ lyrics cut off into partial epigrams, yet strike unambiguously in repetition, achieving a mix that leans more toward near-straight dance than the airy rock of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, leaving the questions of “do we have to know what truth is?” cuts of “self-entitled portraits,” and down note of “I’ll never know/ you” an equally unconcerned and urgent tone that carries consistently through the album: “under stress/ whatever” to an energy line of synths and guitardrowning drumkit.

Tim UBELS

JOE JOHNSON

NICK UBELS

MICHAEL SCOULAR

Album Review

Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze NICK UBELS THE CASCADE

“Hey, but I’m just human, after all,” sings Kurt Vile on the eight-minute mid-album pledge “Too Hard,” which finds the drawling lo-fi Philadelphia singer cataloguing a series of promises both personal and civic.

Waking on a Pretty Daze is Vile’s fifth solo record released after co-founding the War on Drugs in 2008. It comes two years after Vile’s critical breakthrough, Smoke Ring For My Halo, a record which helped establish what could be described as his signature style: intricate and chiming acoustic guitar arpeggios; ‘70s American rock sensibilities; sporadic drum machines; heady, ramshackle production and a laid-back, slacker rock attitude.

It’s a distinctive, but not constricting combination, and something that Vile toys with freely. It makes it really easy to identify one of his tracks when it comes on the radio.

Hell, Vile’s voice itself would be enough to give him away. It’s an unmistakable airy, droning low-register twang, heaving the album forward.

Achieving a strong, unmistakably original voice is something all artists struggle with. People driven to create music tend to have deep taste and interest in other music, which in turn makes it difficult to overcome the weight of one’s influences. Kurt Vile’s work is no different, but for the fact that he has seemed to breach that gap, where his records cease to be “a mash-up of Tom Petty

and Grandaddy” or “Pavement meets John Fahey,” but simply Kurt Vile records.

Blessed with a knack for titles that evoke the atmosphere of the album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze sounds just as you would expect.

There’s an unhurried, hypnotic and contemplative feel to Vile’s songs, which seem to circle back in on themselves. He mostly eschews traditional verse-chorus-versechorus-bridge-chorus structure. The songs thrive on a blissful disregard for running times or building up momentum or anxiety, but finding a laid-back groove and letting it ride. It’s stoner rock for millenials.

The album is swimming in sing-along “heys” and “yeahs” delivered with casual perfection, arriving precisely when necessary (not unlike certain wizards). Vile’s music certainly has a mystical streak that’s less to do with lyrics than instrumentation and production. Swirling chorus and flanger effect pedals give each guitar note a sort of worn, warm indeterminacy. Vile kind of seems like Mac DeMarco’s older brother: a quiet, long-haired pot philosopher who mostly keeps to himself and his basement studio.

The progression between 2011’s Smoke Ring and Wakin is not astronomical. There are slight variations and new territory explored by way of longer running times (“Too Hard” at eight minutes long and the title track at 9:37), a return to some more electric guitar-based work (roadhouse stomper “Kv Crimes”) and some slight country leanings (the slide guitar-powered chorus of

“Shame Chamber”), but the two records are of a piece. They paint the portrait of an idiosyncratic musician working on the cusp of

mainstream attention, from the comforts of his own garage.

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ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

Directors’ Festival shows off UFV talent KATIE STOBBART AMY VAN VEEN and JESS WIND

THE CASCADE The curtain has closed on another successful Director’s Festival (or D-Fest, for you theatre regulars) hosted by UFV’s theatre department.

Ian Fenwick, theatre instructor and Director’s Festival coordinator, said that the 18th annual festival was among the best they’ve had. Alexandra Shewan, co-creator and director of The “F” Word, has been involved in every directors’ festival since 2009 and she praised this year’s as being the best.

“The calibre of the work was very high across the whole board (UFV or visiting),” she described.

“I was only able to get to [approximately] 15 of the 25 shows, but I thoroughly enjoyed everything I saw.”

“The quality of the productions was impressive especially when you reflect on what our relatively small department accomplished in hosting the festival, mounting 16 individual productions, and

providing tech and front-of-house support for all the productions including the nine visiting shows,” Fenwick explained.

With 4073 tickets sold, this year’s festival drew the largest audience D-Fest has ever seen. Fenwick argued that the festival is one of UFV’s highest attended events and the top drawing theatre event in BC’s post-secondary sector.

It’s a lot to think about as a director when you’re just hoping the audience will laugh at the right moment.

Colleen Plenert, director Don Zolidis’ The Brother’s Grimm Spectaculathon, was particularly worried about the amount of audience participation her show required.

“I’ve never done a show where we needed to rely on the audience like that and in rehearsal it was really hard to gauge how that would work,” she explained. “Audiences just had great reactions. They were willing to just make believe with us that all these actors were playing these different characters.”

For Dylan Schroeder, writer and director of What the Water Gave Me, the anxiety came from having his

Cascade Arcade

Dissecting a love of the side-scrolling style

script come to life on stage.

“It’s a really unique anxiety,” he explained. “If the script bombs, it’s 100 per cent your fault, but on the other hand every time the audience laughs or feels something because of something you’ve written, the rush is that much bigger.”

If you missed the two plays at DFest, or if you want to catch them for a second, or fourth time, the side splitting comedy of The Brother’s Grimm Spectaculathon and the fantastical coming-of-age struggles of What the Water Gave Me will be playing at the Harrison Festival of the Arts on July 9.

With 25 one-act plays in five days, 16 of which were directed by UFV students, there was ample opportunity to enjoy the university’s own talent.

Cait Archer, writer and director of Miss Somewhere, hopes that the next festival will be an opportunity to show her play again after some rewrites.

“D-Fest is a great place to see modern, edgy content for a very low price, and we’d love to see more students taking advantage of the opportunity. It’s also hella

fun,” she said. Archer added that the practical component of the Directors’ Festival is what makes it so valuable for students.

“There were five original works in the festival this year,” she explained, “and that kind of environment, where you’re relying on your own instincts but are still fully supported if you ask for help, is essential to creative growth ... you can theorize to your heart’s content, but that learning is cemented by practical experience.”

The student directors have coaching sessions with festival coordinator Ian Fenwick, but aside from those the plays are student directed.

“It was really a labour of love,” she described, “and my brilliant cast made it all possible ... One of the best things about D-Fest is that we’re able to do things like this with barely any supervision ... It would be really awesome to increase our student audience over the next few years.”

Shewan, too, was thrilled with the response to The “F” Word, a play compiled by herself and the three other members of the Four

www.ufvcascade.ca

Muses Ensemble, made up of herself, Madison McArthur, Natasha Ray and Renee Reeve. The play brought forth a lot of discussion, both humourous and controversial, and uniquely had a Q&A portion at the end for those who wanted a space to ask questions or share their opinions.

“To be honest,” she explained, “we were expecting quite a bit of apprehension, especially with the talk-back portion at the end of the show. I am very pleased to say that those expectations were not fulfilled in the slightest! Our audience was always at the forefront of our mind when creating this piece.

Our goal was to create something accessible that will get people thinking and talking, and I believe we achieved just that.”

For those who missed this year’s hugely successful D-Fest, there will be the two plays at Harrison Festival of the Arts, but for the rest of us, there’s a whole new season of UFV theatre starting in the fall semester and another directors’ festival to count down to in the spring of 2014.

Q&A with Great Lakes Swimmers DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE Tony Dekker is the lead singer/ songwriter of quiet Canadian darlings, Great Lake Swimmers. The band has been touring for the past decade, and was nominated for a Juno award in Roots & Traditional Album of the Year for 2013 for their recently released New Wild Everywhere.

How was the show last night?

It was great. I thought it went really well.

Really high-energy crowds this weekend, I’ve noticed.

Yeah, which was great – because we had a low-energy performance.

We’re just a quiet band, I guess.

Image: SuperMeatBoy.com

Super Meat Boy is one of the many preferred side-scrolling games.

DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE There is something incredibly comforting about side-scrollers.

I’ve always preferred the sidescrolling style to first-person, shunning the latter category almost completely. Until now, I’ve pegged it as a peculiar and inexplicable preference of mine, the same way I won’t eat beets or like it when doors are painted red.

Side-scrollers belong with other relaxing memories grounded firmly in childhood, like the colour of Hardy Boys’ bindings, or the weight of Monopoly pieces, or the smell of coffee or freshly-cut grass.

There’s an element of nostalgia for sure – but on the other hand, the draw I feel to side-scrollers is something more than that. The love started with a healthy helping of Mario Brothers (including my very favourite spin-off, Warioworld), continued with the early Zelda games, but also translated into contemporary games like Super Meat Boy and Limbo.

So I started thinking about it on another level (no pun intended): why is it that I prefer a two-dimensional world to a threedimensional world? Why is it that

I ultimately favour a flat pane of gameplay, like some kind of colourful ant farm, to a more realistic world like Skyrim or even Halo?

There’s less to do, less to explore, and only one direction to go.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. I like the flattened worlds of side-scrollers because they are less complicated. With the exception of the underwater levels in Donkey Kong, you always know the way forward – an element that is sorely lacking in real life.

I know I’m oversimplifying the situation when I say it, but somewhere inside me I guess I still feel it: why play a first-person style game when life is already firstperson?

I know you can do a lot in a three-dimensional world, like play as a hammerhead shark wielding a lava-spewing hammer as a weapon, but I think I’ll stick to my side-scrollers. I don’t want to have to put more brainpower into navigating than I have to, and if I can get away with it I’ll do without an extra dimension every time.

If you need me, you can find me building a kick-ass and twodimensional house in Terraria, because I tried Minecraft and I only got lost.

You’ve been touring for ten years. How do you keep it going?

How do you keep finding new life?

You have to love what you’re doing, you know? It’s a labour of love. It’s not always easy to keep finding the energy to do it, but it’s the songs – the momentum and the energy comes from the songs when we’re playing.

You’re the main songwriter for the band. Is that a lot of pressure?

No – I try not to put too much pressure. Any pressure that there is comes from myself and my own deadlines. I try to be disciplined with my writing, but I wouldn’t see that as pressure. It’s kind of like exercising. You just need to keep doing it, and hopefully you get better at it.

Do you have a rigorous schedule for yourself?

I find that nights are usually best for me – I’m kind of a night person. So in the dead of night, when everyone else is asleep is kind of my ideal time to be free from distractions and to work on things. I wouldn’t say I have a set schedule, but I cherish my night hours.

How late are we talking?

Like two, or three, or four in the morning. Sometimes I’ll stay up

until sunrise working on stuff. It sort of makes for some pretty unusual hours in general, and with the amount that we travel it’s not always easy to get that kind of schedule on the road. But at home I really like staying up late and writing.

Do you think writing in that time period comes out in the more quiet nature of your songs?

Hmm. Maybe. Yeah. I’ve never really thought about that, but that could be true.

There’s a lot of nature imagery in your work – how are you inspired by nature and how do you find ways to get back to that when you’re touring?

We try to take as many detours as we can, and especially touring across Canada there’s so much great nature stuff out there to do when we’re travelling. We do try to visit parks and things along the way and add that into our tour schedule as we can, but in general I try to get out into nature as much as I can on my off-days. That’s really a continued source of inspiration for me and my music.

I really like going into northern Ontario as much as I can. It’s also kind of the easiest for me to get to, being based in Toronto. But I love being in St. John’s, Newfoundland, because there’s just such an inter-

esting topography and the ocean – it’s really beautiful. I love being in St. John’s.

The band has done shuffling with who’s in and who’s out and who’s doing other projects – have you kind of set on a group now?

Yeah, I think a core group. Especially the four of us—Miranda and Eric and Brett and myself—I feel like that’s kind of the core of the group now for sure.

It was nice to have an album where we all play on every song, and to see it through to a year later where we’re at the Junos – it’s really nice to see the whole cycle of everyone working hard on touring and working hard on the album, and being able to hang out with everyone here has been really nice.

And what are you listening to these days?

I just saw Leonard Cohen again recently, so that always makes me dig back into my Leonard Cohen catalogue in my record library, you know? So I’ve listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen lately, since then.

You know when you hear a band that you really like and it kind of sparks your interest again in music – and there are so many great albums by Leonard Cohen. I’ve just been digging back in and relistening to a lot of that stuff.

www.ufvcascade.ca

An open letter to Don Cherry To Don Cherry,

While I appreciate your concern for us lady-folk being mistreated in male locker rooms, I have to call you out on your archaic view of the world. Respect for women doesn’t mean we should be excluded from professions simply because men are going to “act like jerks.” If that were the case then pardon me, we’d be excluded from a lot of professions.

Before I get any accusations of being a man-hater, let me clarify, I’m a jerk-hater. Jerkdom does not discriminate by gender, it comes from an intrinsic need to ruin other people’s days. There are jerks everywhere. There are jerks at school, at the grocery store, at work, on the street, in your neighbourhood, and yes, there are even jerks in your house.

Some people act like jerks, and some people just are jerks. There is no way to avoid someone being a jerk to you.

My point being, respect for women doesn’t come from putting us up on a pedestal and saying, “don’t worry sweetheart, we’ll protect you from the bad men.” That’s barbaric and quite frankly, patronizing. Respect from women means that the guys in the locker room treat her like any other reporter trying to do their job. Telling her that she can’t deal with a little adversity or confrontation in her chosen profession and therefore should be excluded based on gender is demeaning. It’s downright wrong.

For Don Cherry to pull the age old argument of “you would not want your daughter or your sister in there,” is ridiculous. We are more than your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your girlfriends, your wives. We are women and we are human beings

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SPORTS & HEALTH

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

with free will, thoughts, feelings, intelligent minds and we are plenty capable of holding our own. The fact that it’s addressed as “your daughter/sister” is extremely annoying. It alludes to the idea that women aren’t their own people. He never addressed the female reporters directly, he addressed their elder male counterparts, as if the women in question have no power to speak for themselves. Why don’t you ask them what they think? I bet most of them could care less about a few jerks.

I grew up in a sports-orientated household. I’m not an expert, but I can talk shop and hold my own. I know what it’s like to have your sports opinion discriminated against simply because of your gender. It doesn’t feel good when someone pats you on the head for voicing your point of view. It’s infuriating and offensive to be ignored in favour of someone with a penis, or to be told to go make a sandwich when you open your mouth. Sports is still a male-dominated profession, I understand that, but something’s gotta give.

How about instead of attempting to remove women from male locker rooms, we tell hockey players to act professionally?

They are under multi-million dollar contracts, why is there no stipulation for a code of ethics? And if there is, why is it not being reinforced within the profession? It makes absolutely no sense to punish and exclude women for simply being female, when the root of the problem is a sense of entitlement felt by male athletes to act like jerks.

Sincerely, Avid sports fan and female who’s not taking any more of your shit, Melissa Spady

Swept:

End of an era for Canucks JOEL SMART the cascade

The Canucks went from winning all but a single game in their amazing 2011 run, to not winning a single game in their stunning 2013 collapse.

The Canucks went into the playoffs with high hopes. Sure, we all knew that this wasn’t likely to be the year we stormed back to the finals to claim the big prize, but there were signs that this team might be ready to dig deeper than ever before. It was possible that they might make a playoff push, not as an elite high-scoring squad like in 2011, but as a gritty, hardfighting group of veterans ready to do battle on each and every play. Unfortunately, the Canucks never found that extra drive come playoff time. All the talk, all the promises, but when push came to shove, the team just didn’t have the heart and drive for it.

We did see glimmers of brilliance along the way. Ryan Kessler in game two was everything the media suggested he could be.

Again he pulled the team on his back, scoring twice to put Vancouver in the lead. But unfortunately for Vancouver, the rest of the team was all to eager to pull him back down to their level. Roberto Luongo was also brilliant for extended stretches. His pinch save early in the first game of the series was one of the best we’ve ever seen, and it was just one of several astounding saves. The team was perhaps their strongest in the third period of the fourth game, with everything on the line.

But for a team intent on playing defensively, the Canucks defence left a lot to be desired. The team routinely gave up major opportunities to score that were just nowhere to be found on the other

Image: Rob Masefield / Flickr

side of the ice. In a market where goalies are the first to be criticized by the uniformed masses, we saw a team where only the goalie really showed up to play.

The Canucks, as it turned out, were not prepared to deal with a Sharks team that was peaking at the right time – especially with an injury to treasured defencemen Chris Tanev forcing some inexperienced talent into the lineup.

Although it’s tough to separate fact from bias, the NHL refereeing system was also a major downfall for the Canucks. After 2011’s collapse, the Canucks focused on building a tougher team, presumably because that’s what you need to win in the playoffs, when the refs stop calling as much. Only, that didn’t seem to happen this year, when refs decided to call everything on the Canucks in an effort to keep things from getting out of hand. Little extra hits and skirmishes after the whistle routinely found the Canucks in the box against a potent power play.

These momentum-killing penalties were the nail in the coffin for the Canucks. Nowhere was this more evident than in the fi-

nal minutes of game four. A weak call on Kevin Bieksa allowed the Sharks to claw back to tie late in the third, and an even weaker call in overtime on team captain Henrik Sedin was all it took for the San Jose Sharks to move past the Canucks into the second round.

In the weeks and months to come, Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini will have to decide how to revamp this team. One thing seems clear – changes need to be made. First on the chopping block will almost certainly be head coach Alain Vigneault, but the fate of general manager Mike Gillis is also up in the air – it was he who failed to free up cap space with a Luongo trade earlier in the year, not to mention the way most of his player signings have failed to make any significant impact on the team (to put it nicely). What players will go and what players will stay? Perhaps a full-scale rebuild is in the works – and if it means more depth and talent for the team, it’s tough to say that isn’t the right choice for Aquilini moving forward.

NHL Playoffs: A closer look at each first-round series MIKE THOMPSON CONTRIBUTOR

While providing a smorgasbord of entertainment, the NHL postseason has a lot to offer.

Professional hockey players have trained their entire lives for this: an opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup. In 1893, the Montréal Hockey Club won the first Stanley Cup in history. To put that in perspective, World War I was still 21 years away, and Zack Kassian still had all of his teeth. It is the most iconic prize in sports history. Those who have fought for it have made sacrifices.

To win this trophy, one must exhaust the maximum amount of mental and physical exertion that they can possibly muster.

But that’s not enough. You always have to give 100 per cent when you play hockey, but you have to give 110 per cent to win the Stanley Cup. Here is a breakdown of each series.

Eastern Conference

Pittsburgh Penguins vs. (8) New York Islanders Can somebody fix Sidney Crosby’s jaw already? Jeez. If he makes a return in this series, the Islanders are in trouble. I find it really difficult to see John Tavares overtaking Crosby in this series. Although, the Islanders have made for a fantastic story this season, making the playoffs for the first time since 2007, their honeymoon will come to an end. The goalscoring prowess of Crosby, Malkin, Iginla, Neal and Kunitz (to name a few) is extremely hard to overlook.

Penguins in 6.

Montréal Canadiens vs. (7) Ottawa Senators Going from dead last in the conference, to making the playoffs is no easy feat, but the Montréal Canadiens have proved their doubters wrong. With the additions of Alex Galchenyuk, Brendan Gallagher, and the breakout season of P.K. Subban, they could make some noise this postseason. Unfortunately for them, the Senators

just got Erik Karlsson back – the otherworldly, Norris trophy-winning defenceman. Keep a close watch on this series; it’s going to be a slugfest.

Canadiens in 7.

Washington Capitals vs. (6) New York Rangers What the heck happened to Alex Ovechkin? How can you go from zero to hero in a matter of 48 games? Against all odds, he won his third Rocket Richard trophy (most goals in the season), and has propelled his Capitals into Stanley Cup contention. The New York Rangers have added Rick Nash, and subtracted Marian Gaborik this season. Despite their lacklustre year, they are still a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, the Capitals are on a better streak right now.

Capitals in 6.

Boston Bruins vs. (5) Toronto Maple Leafs Okay, okay, okay. We heard you, Toronto. The Maple Leafs are back in the postseason (that felt really weird to type). On a seri-

ous note, I really can’t see them beating the Bruins. With the postseason experience of the Bruins against the overachieving Maple Leafs, one can only hope that this ends quietly.

Bruins in 5.

Western Conference

Chicago Blackhawks vs. (8) Minnesota Wild The almighty Blackhawks barely managed to lose a game this year. They were that good. The Minnesota Wild had an up-anddown year, with a lot of postseason uncertainty. They managed to pull through and take the eighth seed. Let’s see Zach Parise and Ryan Suter try to pull off an upset against Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. Not going to happen.

Blackhawks in 6.

Anaheim Ducks vs. (7) Detroit Red Wings Upset alert! The Red Wings are going to beat the Ducks. This is going to be the best series in the first round. Watch for Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg to pull off their magic against the

veteran Ducks.

Wings in 7.

Vancouver Canucks vs. (6) San Jose Sharks Ah, the analysis that everyone was waiting for. Ryan Kesler needs to be healthy, and Cory Schneider has to stand on his head. Hopefully he can make a return from that “body” injury ASAP, and help the Canucks win. Joe Thornton and the Sharks still have a lot of life left in them.

Watch for this to be hard-fought series. The winner of this will move on, while the loser will probably fire their coach.

Canucks in 7.

St. Louis Blues vs. (5) L.A. Kings St. Louis has a really, really balanced team. Their coach, Ken Hitchcock, has employed a style worthy of high praise. A defencefirst mentality is required for the Blues to come on top, as the Kings are the reigning Stanley Cup champions. This will be a wild one.

Blues in 7.

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SPORTS & HEALTH

In defence of Canadian university athletics JASPER MOEDT the cascade

In Canada we have a university athletics system that is set up to offer a platform for athletes to compete while obtaining an education. Often these athletes are given scholarships to help cover the costs of their education, to make it possible to commit the necessary hours to training instead of a part-time job. This arrangement is set up to allow the athlete to complete a degree, to build on their athletic prowess and to help them move onto success in the real world. In an ideal world under this system the athlete plays their chosen sport for five years, completes their degree and uses their experience to find a successful career and contribute in our society.

The success of this method of university athletics has come under fire by critics for many years.

The commonly-used term “student-athlete” that is used to describe the athletes who compete and attend school at one of our various post-secondary schools across the nation has become a running joke for those who believe that most athletes who compete at our universities are there to simply play their sport and have no desire to be in class.

This criticism is not without merit. There are valid reasons to criticize the appointment of scholarships to students who may or may not have any interest in actually attending class. Is there any point in giving scholarships to students who will never complete their education?

On the surface it is an illogical act. It is the equivalent of throwing money down the drain. This is not to say that athletics are completely devoid of scholars, as a large number of athletes at UFV are well on their way to achieving their degrees and moving onto very successful careers. But having been around university athletics for several years I have seen firsthand the contradictory atmosphere that comes with university athletics. Attending class and writing papers often get pushed onto the backburner to go get another training session in, or to attend competitions. All too often athletes finish their five years of eligibility and walk away without anything close to a degree or, worse yet, walk away mid-career because they have no interest in completing upper-level classes. In a worst-case scenario the athlete will end up walking away without completing any academic or athletic goals.

Despite this, the system stays in

place year after year with no real talk of change. Coming from the perspective of a student athlete, I would vouch for the current system for a single reason – it provides hope and an opportunity for athletes to see that there is life beyond his or her respective sport. University sport is the last opportunity for many athletes to transition their success in their respective sports into success in the next stage of life.

While the number student athletes who walk away from their university experience without a degree is all too often the focus of the argument surrounding this system, what is often overlooked is the number of students who may never have achieved a postsecondary education if not for the opportunity presented by Canadian universities. The success of this system should not be defined by the number of dropouts, but by the number of students who make it through their education and graduate.

This system, with all its flaws, still works. It provides hope and opportunity for young men and women across the country who may have never received this opportunity otherwise.

Jason Collins: Out of the closet and into the spotlight JASPER MOEDT the cascade

There haven’t been many stories in the last week that have captured the attention of the public and the media the way the article written by Jason Collins on the Sports Illustrated website has.

The article is intended to inform the world that Collins is gay.

Collins opens the article with the simple statement “I’m a 34-year-old NBA centre. I’m black. And I’m gay.” He moves on to describe his journey in coming out of the closet and his motivations behind it. Generally, Collins describes it as a process of coming to realize what he wanted in life and from there stepping forward and realizing that to truly be himself he needed to be honest with the world around him.

Coming out of the closet is something that took a ton of courage and bravery. The general tone of response from the media and public has been overwhelmingly positive, with various high profile athletes and media outlets openly professing support for Collins.

There is also talk of Collins signing a major deal with Nike as well as talk of Collins signing a contract for more money with the next team he plays for (Collins is a free agent as of this summer).

On the surface it seems as though Collins has actually increased his personal worth by coming out to the public. He has gone from a relative unknown in the world to the first openly gay professional athlete. Collins will now be under the public microscope on and off the court for many years to come.

Open discrimination based on sexuality is not a response that has been prevalent to Collins coming

Images: SD Dirk/Flickr

Jason Collins has just become the first openly-gay man to play in the NBA. out. Those who may have a negative opinion of Collins have generally kept those opinions away from the mainstream media.

The pressure now sits on Collins’ shoulders to continue to be relevant as an athlete. Bravery aside, this man will not have nearly the impact on the world if he does not continue to compete in the NBA. To have an active NBA player competing on a nightly basis under the public eye could make Collins one of the most important ambassadors to the LGBT community, whether Collins wishes it or not.

What makes the declaration of Collins’ homosexuality so important to our society is the way it goes against all the assumed norms. Male athletes are expected to be strong, masculine, testosterone-fueled straight men. If that were not the norm, then this announcement wouldn’t be break-

ing news. In many senses the sporting world is lagging behind the rest of our society in terms of tolerance and acceptance.

For Collins to exist in a sports world which is still widely known for intolerance and very traditional views of masculinity, it represents a massive step forward towards tolerance. Collins becomes a regular public reminder that the world is changing; acceptance is becoming the norm, and whoever chooses to not accept this will be left behind.

Stepping into the spotlight and exposing his vulnerability to the world is the first step for Collins in his journey to live his life as he is, no longer living as he is expected to be by the world surrounding him. Collins has become an ambassador for acceptance and tolerance, and the hope is that he can continue this role for many years to come.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013 www.ufvcascade.ca

The low-down on aspartame

We know aspartame’s chemical make-up, but do we know how safe it is?

MELISSA SPADY contributor

I’ve never really been a fan of diet soda. The funny aftertaste was enough for me to steer clear. Ergo my interest in artificial sweeteners has been scant at best. My introduction to the world of artificial sweeteners came when I finally asked my boyfriend why he chose diet over regular soda. He told me his dad was diagnosed with diabetes a few years ago and since then he’d made the conscious decision to cut back on his sugar.

In my ignorance I assumed that was logical decision to make, as most people would, but I still had to ask the question: what exactly is aspartame?

According to the Health Canada website, aspartame “is made by the bonding together of the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine, which are normal constituents of proteins, to form a dipeptide which is further esterified with methanol.”

A lot of those words are big and science-y, and I’m not entirely sure if that answered my question or just created more. Built right into the explanation is an argument for it’s safety: normal constituents of proteins. Does that make it safe though?

Like many other controversial food additives, it’s difficult to find consistent and conclusive evidence about the safety of ingesting aspartame. Although it’s been around for over 30 years, there is still a lot of back and forth on whether or not it’s actually safe to consume. The articles online are downright contradictory. If one travels to government-funded websites or aspartame.org the argument appears to be air tight, and makes a point of putting down those who still oppose its use. Any health concern brought up has been allegedly debunked through studies on both lab rats and human subjects where no adverse symptoms where reported. The fact that over 90 different countries have tested aspartame and approved it safe for human consumption appears to be a fairly substantial indication for many people to continue purchasing diet products.

However if you mosey on over

to independent health websites, they claim that there’s a lot more to what they call “aspartame poisoning” than testing a small group of the population. SweetPoison.com is quoted as saying, “the multitude of aspartame side effects are indicative to your genetic individuality and physical weaknesses,” meaning that aspartame supposedly affects each of us differently. They cite a large list of symptoms, so many in fact that they have to break it up by body part. A few include blindness in one or both eyes, tinnitus (a ringing in the ear), headaches and migraines, depression, nausea, weight loss and weight gain.

Dr. Andrew Weil also asserts on his website that “no evidence exists to suggest that using artificial sweeteners helps anyone lose weight.” Some doctors state that aspartame fools your pancreas into over producing insulin, which causes more glucose than necessary to be removed from the blood. This will actually create clinical diabetes symptoms and hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. Some sources go as far to claim that studies where no safety issues with aspartame were found were actually funded by the aspartame industry, whereas over 90 per cent of the independently-funded ones found some health problem with it.

There are a staggering number of websites that suggest you should remove aspartame from your diet immediately, citing it as a “deadly killer,” but the fact remains that it’s still approved by our governments and is found all over the place. Common foods with aspartame include soft drinks (as well as iced tea), chewing gum, diet and diabetic foods, jams, vitamins, over the counter drugs, prescriptions and more.

I, like many of you, am a health-concerned individual.

My personal health is my top priority, and I don’t like to throw the dice when it comes to something so important to me. Therefore I will be actively avoiding aspartame, but I can’t make that decision for anyone else. Educate yourselves on what you’re ingesting by reading labels and googling ingredients, then choose what’s right for your body.